46 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY appears to have disdained no detail of daily life. Asparagus is not the only dish which he added to the menus of his day. He was fastidious about cooking, and invented many good things. He also introduced the fashion of being served on crystal instead of on gold or silver, with other refinements of the table. The manufacture of glass was introduced into Spain by an Arab of the name of Furnas at about this period. Zaryab also set the fashion of changing dress for four seasons of the year instead of for only two, as was the custom before his day. The curious in such matters may read in the Arab chronicles what was worn — silks and muslins, wadded clothes and furs, according to the time of year. The ladies were also extremely fond of jewels, and wore even jewelled shoes, for which they would give as much as ;i20 a pair. But in dress as in food, Zaryab specially valued the refinement of cleanliness. Before his time the Kings of Andalusia, we are told, used to have their clothes washed in water of roses and other garden flowers, the consequence of which was that they never looked quite clean. Zaryab taught them a method in which, by adding salt to the mixture, *'the linen could be made clear and white." The chronicle gravely records that the *' experiment having been tried, every one approved of it," and Zaryab was much praised for the invention. It was the reputation of the Arabs that they were "the cleanest people upon earth " in all that related to their person, dress, beds, and the interior of their houses. Indeed, we are told, ''they carried cleanliness so far that it was not an uncommon thing for a man of the lower classes to spend his last coin in soap instead of buying food for his daily consumption, and thus go without his dinner rather than appear in public in dirty clothes." By way of contrast in habits we may recall certain Irish earls, who, towards the end of the Desmond rebellion about 1581, are described as sleeping with their ladies and all their servants in a hall so dirty as to be "not fit for a hog cote," while the only toilet that the ladies made in the morning was "to