Within our recollection, comb-making was considered one of the most miserable of trades, and as destitute of any thing like an organized _modus operandi_ as that of the perambulating artisans who possessed a certain skill in the fashioning of rams' horns into spoons and rejoiced in the expressive designation of Horners. On a late visit to Aberdeen, however, we found the manufacture of combs carried on there not only to an extent far exceeding our preconceived notions, but flourishing in a state of skilful organisation; and we hastened to visit the comb-works of by far the largest comb-maker in this country or in the world. We have no room to follow the steps by which Aberdeen came to be the seat of this particular branch of industry; but before describing the system of comb-making there, we shall take a short retrospective glance at the general history of the comb, in order to illustrate the various changes it has passed through, and its gradual elevation to a respectable position in the manufactures of the country.
It is impossible to state with any degree of accuracy the time when it first became an indispensable requisite of the toilet; but by what we can glean from the ancient writers it would appear to have been of Egyptian origin. The Greeks and Romans used combs made of boxwood, which they obtained as we do, from the shores of the Euxine Sea, and the mountain-ridge of Cytorus, in Galatia. According to Guasco, a modern Italian author, combs were also formed of silver, iron, bronze, but in no instance do we find the modern material, shell or horn. In addition to the wooden combs found in their tombs, it has been proved that the Egyptians had ivory combs, toothed on one side, which gradually came into use among the Greeks and Romans; but from specimens of the remains found at Pompeii, with representations on the Amyclæan tables, it would seem that the Greeks, who were remarkably studious and careful in arranging their hair, used them, with teeth on both sides, exactly similar to our small-tooth-combs.
The mediæval progress of the comb exhibits, like that of every thing else of its class, much curious elaboration with but little improvement in utility. In the fifteenth volume of the _Archæologia_ there is a representation of an ivory comb found in the ruins of Inkleton Nunnery, Cambridgeshire, containing some Anglo-Saxon design exquisitely carved in relief, but with such teeth as a common boor in our day would treat with contempt. We find Chaucer commenting on the many absurd articles of female attire, at a time when both sexes tied up their hair in a "licorous fashion" with ivory pins; and one of the earliest specimens of English combs extant, was dug up in 1764 from beneath the lowest of the three paved streets, which lie--memorials of their several ages--under the present Shiprow Street of Aberdeen; and it was supposed to have lain there ever since Edward III. burned and ruined the city in 1336.