a machine used to raise wind, and cool the air by agitating it.

That the use of the fan was known to the ancients is very evident from what Terence says,

Cape loc flabellum, et ventulum huic sic facito;

and from Ovid, Art. Amand. I. 161.

Profuit et tenues ventos movisse flabello.

The fans of the ancients were made of different materials; but the most elegant were composed of peacocks feathers, or perhaps painted so as to represent a peacock's feather.

The custom which now prevails among the ladies, of wearing fans, was borrowed from the east, where the hot climate renders the use of fans and umbrellas almost indispensable.

In the east they chiefly use large fans made of feathers, to keep off the sun and the flies. In Italy and Spain they have a large sort of square fans, suspended in the middle of their apartments, and particularly over the tables: these, by a motion at first given them, and which they retain a long time on account of their perpendicular suspension, help to cool the air and drive off flies.

In the Greek church, a fan is put into the hands of the deacons in the ceremony of their ordination, in allusion to a part of the deacon's office in that church, which is to keep the flies off the priests during the celebration of the sacrament.

What is called a fan among us and throughout the chief parts of Europe, is a thin skin, or piece of paper, taffety, or other light stuff, cut semicircularly, and mounted on several little sticks of wood, ivory, tortoiseshell, or the like. If the paper be single, the sticks of the mounting are pasted on the least ornamented side: if double, the sticks are placed between them. Before they proceed to place the sticks, which they call mounting the fan, the paper is to be plaited in such a manner, as that the plaits may be alternately inward and outward.

It is in the middle of each plait, which is usually about half an inch broad, that the sticks are to be pasted; and these again are to be all joined and riveted together at the other end—they are very thin, and scarcely exceed one-third of an inch in breadth; and where they are pasted to the paper, are still narrower, continuing thus to the extremity of the paper. The two outer ones are bigger and stronger than the others. The number of sticks rarely exceeds 22. The sticks are usually provided by the cabinet-makers or toymen; the fan-painters plait the papers, paint, and mount them.

The common painting is either in colours or gold leaf, applied on a silvered ground, both prepared by the goldbeaters. Sometimes they paint on a gold ground, but it is rarely; true gold being too dear, and false too paltry. To apply the silver leaves on the paper, they use a composition, which they pretend is a great secret, but which appears to be no other than gum arabic, sugar-candy, and a little honey, melted in common water, and mixed with a little brandy. This composition is laid on with a sponge; then laying the silver leaves thereon, and pressing them gently down with a linen ball stuffed with cotton, they catch hold, and adhere together. When, instead of silver, gold ground is laid, the same method is observed. The ground being well dried, a number of the papers are well beaten together on a block, and by this means the silver or gold get a lustre as if they had been burnished.

Fan is also an instrument to winnow corn. The machine used for this purpose by the ancients seems to have been of a form similar to ours. The fan, which Virgil calls mystica vannus lacchi, was used at initiations into the mysteries of the ancients: for as the persons who were initiated into any of the mysteries, were to be particularly good, this instrument, which separates the wheat from the chaff, was the fittest emblem that could be of setting apart the good and virtuous from the vicious and useless part of mankind. It is figuratively applied in a similar manner in Luke iii. 17.