Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 21, ROT-Siam

S H A — S H E
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Magazine. He engraved the Doctors Disputing on the
Immaculateness of the Virgin and the Ecce Homo of
Guido Reni, the St Cecilia of Domenichino, the Virgin
and Child of Dolci, and the portrait of John Hunter^of
Sir Joshua Reynolds. His style of engraving is thoroughly
masterly and original, excellent in its play of line and
rendering of half-tints and of “colour.” He died at
Chiswick on the 25th July 1824. In his youth Sharp
was a violent republican, and, owing to his hotly expressed
adherence to the politics of Paine and Horne Tooke, he
was examined by the privy council on a charge of treason.
He was also one of the greatest visionaries in matters
pertaining to religion. No imposture was too gross for
him to accept, no deception too glaring for his eyes to
admire. The dreams of Mesmer and the rhapsodies of
Brothers found in Sharp a staunch believer; and for long
he maintained Joanna Southcott at his own expense. As
an engraver he achieved a European reputation, and at the
time of his death he enjoyed the honour of being a member
of the Imperial _ Academy of Vienna and of the Royal
Academy of Munich.
SHAWL, a square or oblong article of dress worn in
various ways dependent from the shoulders. The term is
of Persian origin (shdl), and the article itself is most
characteristic and important in the dress of the natives of
north-western India and Central Asia; but in various
forms, and under different names, essentially the same
piece of clothing is found in most parts of the world. The
shawls made in Kashmir occupy a pre-eminent place among
textile products; and it is to them and to their imitations
from Western looms that specific importance attaches.
The Kashmir shawl is characterized by the great elabora¬
tion and minute detail of its design, in which the “ cone ”
pattern is a prominent feature, and by the glowing
harmony, brilliance, depth, and enduring qualities of its
colours. The basis of these excellences is found in the
raw material of the shawl manufacture, which consists of
the very fine, soft, short, flossy under-wool, called pashm or
pashmina, found on the shawl-goat, a variety of Capra
hircus inhabiting the elevated regions of Tibet. There are
several varieties of pashm, according to the districts in
which it is produced, but the finest is a strict monopoly
of the maharaja of Kashmir, through whose territory it
comes. Inferior pashm and Kirman wool—a fine soft
Persian sheep’s wool—are used for shawl weaving at
Amritsar and other places in the Punjab, where colonies of
Kashmiri weavers are established; but just in proportion
to the quality of the pashm used are the beauty and value
of the resulting shawl. In Kashmir the shawl wool is
sorted with patient care by hand, and spun into a fine
thread, a work of so much delicacy, owing to the shortness
of the fibre, that a pound of undyed thread may be
worth £2, 10s. The various colours, costly and perma¬
nent, are dyed in the yarn. The subsequent weaving or
embroidering is a work of great labour, and a fine shawl
will occupy the whole labour of three men not less than a
year. Thus a first-rate shawl weighing about 7 lb may
cost at the place of its production £300, made up thus:—
material £30, labour £150, duty £70, miscellaneous
expenses, £50. In shawl cloth many varieties of dress
articles are made; but of shawls themselves, apart from
shape and pattern, there are only two principal classes:—
(1) loom-woven shawls called tiliwalla, tilikdr or kdni
kdr,—sometimes woven in one piece, but more often
in small segments which are sewn together with such
precision and neatness that the sewing is quite impercept¬
ible (such loom-woven shawls have borders of silk, the
weight and stiffness of which serve to stretch the shawl
and make it set properly); and (2) embroidered shawls—
amlik&r,—in which over a ground of plain pashmina is [
worked by needle a minute and elaborate pattern. A
arge proportion of the inhabitants of Srinagar, the capital
o Kashmir, are engaged in the shawl industry; and there
are numerous. colonies of Kashmiri weavers settled at
Amritsar, Ludianah, Nurpur, and other towns -in the
1 unjab. Amritsar is now the principal entrepot of the
shawl trade between India and Europe. Imitation Kashmir
shawls are made at Lyons, Nimes, Norwich, and Paisley
and some of the products of these localities are little
inferior in beauty and elaboration to Oriental shawls; but
owing to the fluctuations of fashion there has been little
demand for the finer products of European looms for many
years. See also Persia, vol. xviii. p. 626.
SHEA BUTTER. See Oils, vol. xvii. p. 747.
SHEARWATER, the name of a bird first published in
, ^highbys Ornithologia (p. 252), as made known to him
by Sir T. Browne, who sent a picture of it with an account
that is given more fully in Ray’s translation of that work
(p. 334), stating that it is “ a Sea-fowl, which fishermen
observe to resort to their Vessels in some numbers, swim¬
ming1 swiftly to and fro, backward, forward, and about
them, and doth as it were radere aguam, shear the water,
from whence perhaps it had its name.”2 Ray’s mistakinp'
young birds of this kind obtained in the Isle of Man for
the young of the Coulterneb, now usually called Puffin,
has already been mentioned under that heading (vol. xx!
p. 102), and not only has his name Pujjinus anglorum
hence become attached to this species, commonly described
in English books as the Manx Puffin or Manx Shearwater,
but the barbarous and misapplied word P^lffinus has come
into regular use as the generic term for all birds thereto
allied, forming a well-marked group of the Family Procel-
lariidx (cf Petrel, vol. xviii. p. 711), distinguished
chiefly by their elongated bill, and numbering some twenty
species, if not more—the discrimination of which, owing
partly to the general similarity of some of them, and partly
to the change of plumage which others through age are
believed to undergo, has taxed in no common degree the
ingenuity of those ornithologists who have ventured on
the difficult task of determining their characters. Shear¬
waters are found in nearly all the seas and oceans of the
world,3 generally within no great distance from the land,
though rarely resorting thereto, except in the breeding-
season. But they also penetrate to waters which may be
termed inland, as the Bosphorus, where they have long
attracted attention by their daily passage up and down
the strait, in numerous flocks, hardly ever alighting on the
surface, and from this restless habit they are known to the
French-speaking part of the population as dmes damnees,
it being held by the Turks that they are animated by
condemned human souls. Four species of Puffinus are
recorded as visiting the coasts of the United Kingdom;
but the Manx Shearwater aforesaid is the only one that at
all commonly occurs or breeds in the British Islands. It
is a very plain-looking bird, black above and white beneath,
and about the size of a Pigeon. Some other species are
1 By mistake, no doubt, for flying or “hovering,” the latter the
word used by Browne in his Account of Birds found in Norfolk (Mus.
Brit. MS. Sloane, 1830, fol. 5. 22 and 31), written in or about 1662.
Edwards {Gleanings, iii. p. 315) speaks of comparing his own drawing
“ with Brown’s old draught of it, still preserved in the British
Museum,” and thus identifies the latter’s “Shear-water” with the
“Puffin of the Isle of Man.”
2 Lyrie appears to be the most common local name for this bird
in Orkney and Shetland; but Scraib and Scraber are also used in
Scotland. These are from the Scandinavian Skraape or Skrofa, and
considering Prof. Skeat’s remarks (Etym. Dictionary, p. 546) as to
the alliance between the words shear and scrape it may be that
Browne’s hesitation as to the derivation of “Shearwater” had more
ground than at first appears.
3 The chief exception would seem to be the Bay of Bengal and
thence throughout the western part of the Malay Archipelago, where,
though they may occur, they are certainly uncommon.