Part 2

. p. 88.

[730] At this period the Danes appear to have spent in eating and drinking the treasure they obtained in plundering; they employed their time only in hunting and breeding cattle, and clothed themselves in the skins of their sheep; but Canute endeavoured to introduce among them the Saxon manners and dress. He had invited into his kingdom from Lower Saxony, which at that time was considered the seat of the arts and sciences, and refined manners, a great many workmen and artists, a colony of whom he established in Roeskild, the capital.

[731] Digestor. lib. xxxiv.

[732] De Habitu Muliebri, cap. i. p. 551.

[733] Charact. cap. 5 et 12.

[734] Apophthegm.

[735] See Herodian, ix. 13.

[736] De Institut. Orat. xi. 3, 144.

[737] Lex. 25, De Auro, Argento, Mundo.

[738] See the instances quoted by G. S. Treuer in Anastasis Veteris Germani Germanæque Feminæ. Helmst. 1729, 4to.

[739] Trist. v. 10, 31. For a complete history of their dress the reader must consult the authors quoted in Fabricii Bibliograph. Antiquaria, p. 861; and in Pitisci Lex. Antiq. v. Bracca.

[740] In his Annotations on Catullus, p. 100.

[741] In that learned and ingenious work, Erklärung der Vasengemälde, i. 3, p. 186.

[742] Lib. xxxiv. cap. 14, § 41, p. 667.

[743] Cap. 50, § 3.

[744] Lib. xi. p. 755: ἀνδρόποδα καὶ δέρματα.

[745] Histor. lib. iv. p. 306.

[746] Tacitus, Annal. iv. 72.

[747] Hist. Animal. xviii. 17. The singular word καναυτᾶνες, respecting which a great deal has been said by Pauw in his annotations to Phile de Animal. 48, p. 246, has lately been translated by Böttiger very happily, by the word _kaftane_, a kind of Turkish robe. In the present day these dresses of ceremony are of cotton, with flocks of silk worked into them, and for the most part are whitish, with a few rudely-formed pale yellow flowers: but the word formerly may have signified clothes in general, or fur clothing in particular, and perhaps the silk flocks may have been at first intended to represent fur. That furs at present are employed at Bassorah as presents, is proved by Professor Eichorn.

[748] Vita Agesilai, p. 602. See also Hellenica, lib. iv.

[749] Cyropædia, lib. viii., where he mentions χειρίδας δασείας. The Greeks and the Romans, however, did not wear gloves.

[750] Ammian. Marcell. xxii. 5, p. 232.

[751] Lib. v. 41.

[752] Annal. lib. xiii. In Athenæus, Deipnos. v. p. 197, Callixenus describes Persian counterpanes with figures representing animals, but I do not know whether I ought not, with Valois, to consider them as painted leather, or rather worked tapestry.

[753] Digest. lib. xxxix. tit. 4, 16, 7, or L. ult. § 7, de publicanis. In Gronovii Geographia Antiqua, p. 261, it is said that a great trade was carried on in Cappadocia with Babylonian leather. The _vestes leporinæ_ appear to have been made of the hair of the Angora rabbits.

[754] L. 7, C. de excus. mun. or Cod. lib. 10, tit. 47, 7.

[755] Chardin, iv. p. 245.

[756] De Rebus Geticis, cap. 3, p. 612.

[757] History of the Germans, vol. ii.

[758] Cap. 5, p. 616.

[759] Langebek Scriptores Rerum Danicarum, fol. ii. p. 111.

[760] Torfæi Hist. Norveg. P. 2, p. 34. Compare Schlözer’s Nordische Geschichte in Algem. Welthistor. vol. xxxi. pp. 445, 458.--Having heard from M. Schlözer that the first certain traces of the Russian fur trade were to be found in the Russian Chronicles, works never yet used, I requested him, as the only person in Germany who could draw from these sources, to transmit to me what he had remarked on that subject. I am indebted to him, therefore, for the following valuable information, the result of a laborious comparison of various manuscript chronicles, for which he will no doubt receive the reader’s thanks.

“The following passages are taken from the ten Russian Chronicles, the greater part of them still in manuscript, as a proof that from the ninth century tribute in furs was demanded from the people in Russia by their conquerors.

I. “In the year 859, the Waringians, who came by sea, had tribute from the Tschudi, the Slavi, the Meri, and the Kriwitsches, a squirrel per man. The Chazares (in the Crimea) had tribute from the Poles (the inhabitants of the Ukrain), the Severians and the Wæitsches, a squirrel for each fireplace or hearth.

“The squirrel _Sciurus vulgaris_ had in the old and new Russian language the five following names:--1st. ‘Bēla.’ This primitive word has been lost in the new Russian language, but is still preserved in the Chronicles, and in the adjectives ‘bēlij’ and ‘bēliczij mēch, Grauwerk’ (squirrel-skins). ‘Bēl’ in all the Sclavonic dialects signifies white. Can any connexion be discovered between the squirrel and a white colour? 2nd. ‘Bēlka,’ the diminutive of the former, is at present generally current. 3rd. ‘Wēkscha,’ from which is derived, 4th. ‘Wēkschitza,’ the diminutive. 5th. ‘Weweritza’ is old, but still exists in the Polish.

“The variations of these words which occur in manuscripts are abundant, and some of them exceedingly laughable. One transcriber has ‘bēla;’ most of the rest add ‘wēkscha,’ ‘wēkschitza’ or ‘weweritza,’ as if ‘bēla’ were the adjective white. Two manuscripts say expressly, ‘bēla,’ that is ‘wēkscha.’ In one, however, from ‘bēla weweritza’ has been made ‘bēla ‘dewitza,’ a fair or beautiful maid.

II. “In the year 883 Oleg went against the Drewians and Severians, whom he obliged to pay tribute, each a black marten.

“‘Po czernē kunē’ stands in all the manuscripts; one only has the diminutive ‘kunitzē.’ Another bad manuscript, which has ‘konē,’ a black horse, is not worthy of any remark.

III. “In 969 Svātoslav spoke to his mother and boyars: ‘I am not fond of Kief; I will reside in Pereyaslawetz on the Danube. There I shall be in the middle of my lands, to which every thing good in my territories flows: from the Greeks gold and _pavoloki_ (silk-stuffs?), and wine and fruit of every kind; from the Tscheches (Bohemians) and Hungarians silver and horses; from Russia _skora_, wax, honey, and servants.’ _Skora_, _skura_, furs (according to the Great Lexicon of the Russian Academy), from which is derived _skornak_, similar furs prepared. That coarse skins or furs (in Russian _schurka_), such as the _terga boum_, imposed by the Romans on the Frieslanders, are not here meant, is proved by a passage in the Chronicle of Nicon, vol. ii. p. 15, where it is related of a savage people, who lived far to the north on the Ural, that they gave _skora_ for a knife and a hatchet.

“That marten-skins, as well as pieces of them (_mortki_) and of squirrel-skins, were used as money in Novogorod, till the year 1411, is well-known from Saml. Russ. Geschichte, vol. v. p. 430.”

[761] Du Cange Glossarium.

[762] De Animantibus Subter. p. 490.

[763] Varro De Ling. Lat. lib. vi. p. 51.

[764] Seneca, epist. 90.

[765] Pallas, Novæ Species Quadr. e Glirium ord. 1778, p. 120.

[766] Lib. viii. 37.

[767] Pallas, p. 142. I shall here take occasion to remark, that the use of this animal’s skin, as well as the name, occurs in the eleventh century, in Bernardus Sylvester.

[768] Lib. ii. ep. 2.

[769] See a dissertation De l’Origine des Couleurs et des Métaux dans les Armoiries, added by Du Cange to his edition of Joinville. Paris, 1668, fol. p. 127. See also the article _Hermine_, in his Glossary to Geoffroy de Ville-Hardouin’s Conqueste de Constantinople; or the same in Diction. Etymolog.

[770] Mullers Samlung Russischer Geschichte, vi. p. 491. Fischers Sibirische Geschichte. St. Petersb. 1768, 8vo, p. 290.

[771] Du Cange, in his observations on Joinville, p. 137, thinks that the _zebelinæ_ or _sabelinæ pelles_ came from Zibel or Zibelet, a maritime town in Palestine, formerly called _Biblium_, because the skins were sent from it to Europe. This author meant _Byblus_, at present _Gibelet_ or _Gibeletto_; but this derivation appears to me highly improbable.

[772] Epigram. x. 37, 18.

[773] Trier’s Wapen-Kunst, p. 62.--Gatterers Heraldik. p. 41.

[774] _Grauwerk veh_ or _feh_ means properly a kind of fur, composed of that of the Siberian squirrel and the marten joined together.--TRANS.

[775] Antiquit. Ital. Medii Ævi, ii. p. 413.

[776] See the passages quoted by Du Cange, and what Gesner has said in Histor. Animal. under the head _Cuniculus_.

[777] Rapin’s England.

[778] See this article in Du Cange and Hoffmann’s Lexicon.

[779] Marco Polo.

[780] Lib. ii. epist. 2.

[781] Epig. 92: de birro castoreo.

[782] De dignitate sacerdotali, cap. 5.

[783] Lib. xvii. cap. 28. § 47; xxxii. cap. 9 and 10.

[784] Lib. xix. cap. 27, p. 474.

[785] Lib. xix. cap. 22.

[786] Constantin. de Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ, i. p. 254: σκαραμάγγων καστώριον. The editor, Reiske, thinks that it may have been a pelisse, because Herodotus, iv. 109, speaks of the beaver’s skin being used for clothing. But how different must the old Sarmatian manners have been from the Byzantine!

[787] Epist. 42.

[788] Eginhartus, Vita Caroli Magni, cap. 23.

[789] This anecdote is related by the monk of St. Gall, whose name is supposed to be Notker, in his book De Gestis Caroli Magni, ii. 27, printed in Bouquet, Historiens de la Gaule, v. p. 152. Whether Notker was the author of this chronicle or not, there can be no doubt that it was written after the year 883 and before 887, as has been proved by Basnage. _Pavontalis vestis_, a term used in this passage, does not always signify cloth wove or painted so as to resemble the colours of the peacock; the skin of the peacock was used for ornament; the people of all nations indeed decorated themselves with feathers till they became acquainted with dyeing. The art of those who prepared feathers was banished by that of the dyers.

[790] Carmen De Carolo Magno, in Op. ii. p. 453, v. 225.

[791] At the council of Aix-la-Chapelle in 817, where the dress of the monks was defined, it was ordered, “abbas provideat, unusquisque monachorum habeat ... _wantos_ in æstate, _muffulas_ in hieme vervecinas.” See Sirmond’s Concil. Antiq. Galliæ, Paris, 1629, fol. i. p. 442. _Wantus_ is still retained in the Netherlandish dialect, where _want_ signifies a glove without fingers, having only a place for the thumb; perhaps it is the same word as _want_, _wand_, or _gewand_, which formerly denoted every kind of woollen cloth. Hence is derived the French word _gand_; for _gwantus_ and _gantus_ were formerly used instead of _wantus_. It is equally certain that _muffula_ is of German extraction; _mouw_ at present in Dutch signifies a sleeve. But at what time that covering came into use into which both hands are thrust at present to secure them from the frost, and which according to the size now fashionable covers the whole body and is called a _muff_, I am not able to determine.

[792] Leges Wallicæ, ed. Wottoni. Londini, 1730, fol. p. 261.

[793] Landulphus, lib. ii. c. 18, in Murat. Rer. Ital. Script., tom. iv.

[794] Adam Bremensis in Lindenbrogii Script. Rer. Germ., p. 67.

[795] Albertus Aquensis, in Gesta Dei per Francos, i. p. 203.

[796] Ivo Carn. Epistolæ 104.

[797] Canon 12.

[798] Albertus Aquensis, in Gesta Dei per Francos, i. p. 321.

[799] In Labbei Biblioth. Nova, tom. ii.

[800] Wilhelmus Neubrigensis, lib. iii. cap. 22.

[801] Wilhelmus de Nangis, p. 346. Gottfr. de Bello Loco, cap. 8. Joinville Hist. de St. Louis, p. 118.

[802] Barrington’s Obs. on the more Ancient Statutes, 4to, p. 216.

[803] Constantini lib. de Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ, 1754.

[804] Giulini, Mem. della Città di Milano, vi. p. 407.

[805] Ib. viii. p. 443.

STEEL.

Steel is a carburet of iron, and possesses some remarkable properties, by which it is distinguished from common iron. It is of such a superior degree of hardness, that it is capable of filing the latter; it strikes fire with siliceous stones, and scratches the hardest glass; it is heavier, emits a stronger sound, exhibits on fracture a finer grain, assumes a brighter white lustre when polished, is susceptible of greater elasticity; becomes more slowly magnetic, but retains that power longer; does not so easily acquire rust; in the fire it assumes various strong tints, and when heated is speedily cooled in cold water, but is then harder, more brittle and less pliable. In consequence of these qualities it is fit for many uses to which common iron either cannot be applied, or is less proper.

It is certain that the invention of steel is of very great antiquity. In the Old Testament, however, the mention of it is very doubtful, according to Professor Tychsen, whose remarks on this subject I subjoin in a note below[806]; but it appears that it was used as early as the time of Homer, and that the Greeks gave to it different names, one of the most common of which was _stomoma_, though it seems certain that this word did not so much denote steel itself as the steeled part of an instrument, or the operation of steeling. The name _chalybs_ was given to steel from the Chalybes, a people on the southern shore of the Pontus Euxinus, between Colchis and Paphlagonia, who had considerable mines, and in particular iron and steel works: though others, on the contrary, derive the name of the people from the principal article of their commerce. This derivation appears the more probable, as Justin says that a river of Spain, on which there were steel works, was named _Chalybs_, but at a much later period. Some also have ascribed to the Chalybes the invention of iron, which however is much older.

But it seems to be less known that _adamas_ also at first denoted steel. This is expressly said by Hesychius, and many epithets derived from _adamas_ are applied to articles made of steel or of iron. Among these may be mentioned the helmet of Hercules, in Hesiod[807], and the so-called adamantine chains, gates, and bars of the poets, which in dictionaries are always explained as consisting of precious stones.

It was not till a late period that this word was applied to the most costly of all the precious stones. In this sense it occurs neither in Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Orpheus, nor Dioscorides, though the first of these writers often describes various kinds of valuable ornaments. Goguet and others thence conclude that the diamond was not then known. At present I cannot enter into the history of this stone; but I must own, that I consider the knowledge of it to be older, and suspect that it was first introduced under another name, and is mentioned by Orpheus and some others under that of jasper (jaspis). This poet compares his jaspis to rock crystal, and says that it kindles fire in the same manner. That he knew how to use rock crystal as a burning-glass, he expressly tells us himself; but he certainly could not procure a diamond of such a size as to be able to burn with it. From its vitreous nature however he conjectured, and very properly, that it might be employed for that purpose. He calls the jaspis transparent, compares it to glass, and says that it had that sky colour which at present is named _color hyalinus_. This is probably the reason why Dioscorides and others call some kinds of jasper transparent and sky-coloured. The jaspis in the Revelation of St. John[808], described as a costly transparent crystalline kind of stone, was perhaps our diamond, which afterwards was everywhere distinguished by that name.

The Romans borrowed from the Greeks the word _chalybs_; and in consequence of a passage in Pliny[809], many believe that they gave also to steel the name of _acies_, from which the Italians made their _acciajo_, and the French their _acier_. The word _acies_, however, denoted properly the steeled or cutting part only of an instrument. From this, in later times, was formed _aciarium_, for the steel which gave the instrument its sharpness, and also _aciare_ to steel[810].

At present there are two methods of making steel; the first of which is by fusion either from iron-stone or raw iron, and the second by cementation. I have never found in the works of the ancients any traces of steel prepared by cementation; nor am I acquainted with the antiquity of that process, though the ancients, without knowing it, employed it for brass. Spielman says[811], that Pliny in one part calls it _tostio_; but this word occurs neither in Pliny nor in any ancient writer. It is however possible that the word _torrere_ may somewhere signify cementation, but I have not yet met with an instance of it.

The preparation however by fusion, as practised by the Chalybes, has been twice described by Aristotle; but as I have already given in another work[812] everything I was able to collect towards an explanation of these passages, I shall not here repeat it. I shall only remark, that the steel of the ancients, in consequence of not being cemented, suffered itself to be hammered, and was not nearly so brittle as the hardest with which we are acquainted at present.

On the other hand, the singular method of preparing steel employed by the Celtiberians, in Spain, deserves to be here described. According to the account of Diodorus[813] and Plutarch[814], the iron was buried in the earth, and left in that situation till the greater part of it was converted into rust. What remained, without being oxydized, was afterwards forged and made into weapons, and particularly swords, with which they could cut asunder bones, shields, and helmets. However improbable this may appear, it is nevertheless the process still used in Japan; and Swedenborg has introduced it among the different methods of making steel[815].

The art of hardening steel by immersing it suddenly, when red-hot, in cold water, is very old[816]. Homer says, that when Ulysses bored out the eye of Polyphemus with a burning stake, it hissed in the same manner as water when the smith immerses in it a piece of red-hot iron, in order to harden it[817]. Sophocles uses the comparison of being hardened like immersed iron[818]; and Salmasius[819] quotes a work of an old Greek chemist, who treats on the method of hardening iron in India. It is also a very ancient opinion, that the hardening depends chiefly on the nature of the water. Many rivers and wells were therefore in great reputation, so that steel works were often erected near them, though at a considerable distance from the mines. Instances of this may be found in Pliny[820] and in Justin[821]. The more delicate articles of iron were not quenched in water, but in oil.

An opinion, it is well known, long prevailed, that there were various fluids and mixtures which communicate to steel different degrees of hardness, and every artist thought he knew a peculiar hardening kind of water, the preparation of which he kept a secret. This notion is by some still maintained[822]; because there are often found stones cut by the ancients, which the moderns, on account of their hardness, as is believed, have seldom ventured to touch. Of this kind is the hardest porphyry. There are people who still endeavour to find out that hardening kind of water, in which the ancients prepared their tools for cutting such stones. According to Vasari[823], that water was actually discovered by the archduke Cosmo, in the year 1555. Among a large collection of stones he had a block of porphyry, from which he wished a bason to be made for a well, but was told by the most experienced artists that it was impossible. On this, says Vasari, in order to render the work possible, he prepared from certain herbs, which he does not name, a water wherein the red-hot tools were quenched, and by these means so hardened, that they were capable of cutting porphyry. With tools tempered in this manner the artist Francesco del Tadda not only made the required bason, but various other curious articles[824].

Winkelman, therefore, does injustice to Vasari when he says, “Vasari, in pretending that Cosmo archduke of Tuscany discovered a water for making porphyry soft, betrays childish credulity.” On the contrary, he very properly asserts that there is no water of such a quality as to soften porphyry; though Porta and many old writers imagined that they were acquainted with one capable of producing on that stone, which they considered as a species of marble, the same effects as an acid does on the latter. But Vasari says nothing of the kind.

After Tadda’s death, the art of cutting porphyry came to Raphael Curradi, who communicated to Dominico Corsi this secret, which was afterwards employed by Cosimo Silvestrini[825]. I, however, agree in opinion with Winkelman and Fiorillo, our learned connoisseur in the arts, that the method of working porphyry was known in every age, even in the most barbarous, though artists, no doubt, preferred working on other stones which were less brittle and hard. We know however from the latest researches, that all the kinds of hardening water hitherto invented are in nothing superior to common water; and that in hardening more depends on the nature of the steel, or rather on the degree of heat, than on the water; although it is true that the workman does right when he adds to the water a thin cake of grease, or pours over it hot oil, through which the steel must necessarily pass before it enters the water, for by these means it is prevented from acquiring cracks and flaws.

The invention of converting bar iron into steel by dipping it into other fused iron, and suffering it to remain there several hours, is commonly ascribed to Reaumur[826]. But this process is mentioned by Agricola, Imperati and others, as a thing well-known and practised in their time.

Pliny, Daimachus[827] and other ancient writers mention various countries and places which, in their time, produced excellent steel. Among the dearest kinds were the _ferrum Indicum_ and _Sericum_. The former appears to be the _ferrum candidum_, a hundred talents of which were given as a present to Alexander in India[828]. Is it not probable that this was the excellent kind of steel still common in that country, and known under the name of _wootz_, some pieces of which were sent from Bombay in the year 1795 to the Royal Society of London? Its silver-coloured appearance when polished may have, perhaps, given occasion to the epithet of _candidum_. The method of preparing it is still unknown, but it is supposed to be a kind of fused steel[829]. This however is a mere conjecture, unsupported by any proofs[830]. At what time was damasked steel obtained from the Levant?

[Three kinds of steel are now principally manufactured; bar or blistered steel, shear steel and cast steel.

The bar or blistered steel is made by the process of cementation: this consists in putting bars of the purest malleable iron alternately with layers of charcoal or soot into a proper furnace; the air being carefully excluded and the whole kept at a red heat for several days. By this process the carbon combines with the iron, altering its texture from fibrous to granular or crystalline, and rendering the surface blistered. The action of the carbon occasions fissures and cavities in the substance of the bars, rendering them unfit for tool-making, until they are condensed and rendered uniform by the operation of _tilting_, i. e. compression by a powerful hammer worked by machinery.

Shear steel is made by breaking up bars of blistered steel into lengths of about 18 inches, and binding four or six of them together with a steel rod, and then heating them to a full welding heat, the surface being covered with fine clay or sand to prevent oxidation. They are then drawn out into a bar, hammered, tilted and rolled. In this state it is susceptible of a much finer polish, and is also more tenacious and malleable, and fit for making strong springs, knives, &c.

Cast steel, which was first made by Mr. Huntsman at Attercliff, Sheffield, in 1770, is made by melting blistered steel, casting it into ingots and rolling it into bars. In this condition its texture is much more uniform, closer and finer grained. The different degrees of hardness required for steel are given by the process called tempering, which is effected by heating the steel up to a certain temperature, and then quenching it suddenly in cold water. Its hardness and brittleness are thus much increased, but it may be again softened by exposure to heat simply.]

FOOTNOTES

[806] In regard to the hardening of iron and the quenching of it in water, nothing, as far as I know, occurs in the Hebrew text of the Scriptures. The passages where it seems to be mentioned are, Isaiah, chap. xliv. ver. 12. “The smith bends the iron, works it in a fire of coals, and forms it with the hammer; he labours on it with a strong arm,” &c. according to the translation of Michaelis. It may indeed be translated otherwise, but it certainly alludes to the formation of an image of metal. The words, chap. liv. ver. 16, are still more general.

Iron, _barzel_, often occurs, and in some passages indeed steel may be understood under this name; for example, in Ezekiel, chap. xxvii. ver. 19, _ferrum fabrefactum_, or, according to Michaelis and others, sabre blades from Usal (Sanaa in Yemen). A pretty clear indication of steel is given in Jeremiah, chap. xv. ver. 12: “Iron from the north,” which is described there as the hardest. To the north of Judæa was situated Chalybia, the ancient country of steel. It appears that the Hebrews had no particular name for steel, which they perhaps comprehended under the term _barzel_, or distinguished it only by the epithet Northern, especially as the later Jews have for it no other name than אסטמא, _istoma_, which however is nothing else than the Greek στόμωμα, and signifies rather steeling or hardening.

_Chalamisch_ is certainly a hard kind of stone; granite or porphyry, according to Michaelis, who treats expressly of it in Supplem. ad Lex. Hebr. N. 740.

[807] Scutum Herculis, x. 137.

[808] Chap. xxi. ver. 11, 18, 19.

[809] Lib. xxxiv. sect. 41. p. 666. “Stricturæ vocantur hæ omnes, quod non in aliis metallis a stringenda acie vocabulo imposito. Et fornacum maxima differentia est; nucleus quidem ferri excoquitur in his ad indurandam aciem; aliquæ modo ad densandas incudes, malleorumve rostra.” According to my opinion, _stricturæ_ was the name given to pieces of steel completely manufactured and brought to that state which rendered them fit for commerce. At present steel comes from Biscay in cakes, from other places in bars, and both these formerly were called _stricturæ_, because they were employed chiefly for giving sharpness to instruments or tools, that is, for steeling them. In speaking of other metals, Pliny says that the finished productions at the works were not called _stricturæ_ (this was the case, for example, with copper), though sharpness could be given to instruments with other metals also. The words of Pliny last quoted are read different ways, and still remain obscure. I conjecture that he meant to say that some steel works produced things which were entirely of steel, and that others were employed only in steeling. I shall here remark that the _stricturæ ferri_ remind us of the _strigiles auri_: such was the name given to native pieces of gold, which without being smelted were used in commerce.--Plin. xxxiii. 3. p. 616.

[810] See Vossii Etymol. and Martinii Lex. Philolog.

[811] Institut. Chimiæ, p. 252. He refers to lib. xxxiii. cap. 4.

[812] In my observations on Aristot. Auscult. Mirab. cap. 49.

[813] Diod. lib. v. cap. 33.

[814] Plut. de Garrul.

[815] De Ferro, i. p. 194. See also Watson’s Chem. Essays, i. p. 220. Of the iron works in Japan I know nothing further than what has been said by Thunberg in his Travels. That country possesses very little of this metal: but the sabres made there are incomparable; without hurting the edge one can easily cut through a nail with them; and, as the Japanese say, cleave asunder a man at one blow. These sabres are often sold for fifty, seventy, and even a hundred dollars.

[816] Lord Bacon seems not to have been of this opinion; see his Silva Silvarum, cent. i. § 86. But this method of hardening was usual in the eleventh or twelfth century; for it is described by Theophilus Presbyter, lib. iii. cap. 19.

[817] Odyss. ix. 391.

[818] Ajax, 720.

[819] Exercitat. Plin. p. 763.

[820] Lib. xxxiv. 14, p. 666.

[821] Lib. xliv. p. 620.

[822] [There can be no question that the hardening or tempering effect produced by the sudden immersion of heated steel in fluids has no relation to the quality of the fluid, save as regards its conducting power of heat. The more suddenly the heat is abstracted from the metal, the greater is the amount of hardness and brittleness. Mercury has been found superior to any other fluid for this purpose, undoubtedly because it is so good a conductor of heat.]

[823] Le Vite de Pittori. Bologna, 1681, 4to, i. p. 11.

[824] Some account of this artist is given in J. C. Bulengeri de Pictura, lib. ii. cap. 7, in Gronovii Thesaurus Antiq. Græc. ix. p. 875. On the other hand, Sturm says, in that part of the Ritterplatzes which relates to architecture, p. 18: “An archduke at Florence discovered again the art of working porphyry, but suffered it to die with him in the year 1556.”

[825] Florillo Gesch. der Zeichnenden Künste, 8vo, i. p. 461.

[826] Art de convertir le Fer en Acier, p. 245.

[827] Stephanus de Urbibus, under the word Λακεδαίμων, p. 413.

[828] Clemens Alexandr. in Pædagog. ii. p. 161, edit. Cologne, 1688, fol. says, speaking of luxury, “One can cut meat without having Indian iron.”

[829] Philos. Transact. 1795, ii. p. 322.

[830] [The manner in which iron ore is smelted and converted into wootz or Indian steel, by the natives at the present day, is probably the very same that was practised by them at the time of the invasion of Alexander; and it is a uniform process, from the Himalaya Mountains to Cape Comorin. The furnace or bloomery in which the ore is smelted, is from four to five feet high; it is somewhat pear-shaped, being about two feet wide at bottom and one foot at top; it is built entirely of clay, so that a couple of men may finish its erection in a few hours, and have it ready for use the next day. There is an opening in front about a foot or more in height, which is built up with clay at the commencement, and broken down at the end, of each smelting operation. The bellows are usually made of a goat’s skin, which has been stripped from the animal without ripping open the part covering the belly. The apertures at the legs are tied up, and a nozzle of bamboo is fastened in the opening formed by the neck. The orifice of the tail is enlarged and distended by two slips of bamboo. These are grasped in the hand, and kept close together in making the stroke for the blast; in the returning stroke they are separated to admit the air. By working a bellows of this kind with each hand, making alternate strokes, a tolerably uniform blast is produced. The bamboo nozzles of the bellows are inserted into tubes of clay, which pass into the furnace at the bottom corners of the temporary wall in front. The furnace is filled with charcoal, and a lighted coal being introduced before the nozzles, the mass in the interior is soon kindled. As soon as this is accomplished, a small portion of the ore, previously moistened with water, to prevent it from running through the charcoal, but without any flux whatever, is laid on the top of the coals, and covered with charcoal to fill up the furnace. In this manner ore and fuel are supplied, and the bellows are urged for three or four hours, when the process is stopped, and the temporary wall in front broken down; the bloom is removed with a pair of tongs from the bottom of the furnace. In converting the iron into steel, the natives cut it into pieces to enable it to pack better in the crucible, which is formed of refractory clay, mixed with a large quantity of charred husk of rice. It is seldom charged with more than a pound of iron, which is put in with a proper weight of dried wood, chopped small, and both are covered with one or two green leaves; the proportions being in general ten parts of iron to one of wood and leaves. The mouth of the crucible is then stopped with a handful of tempered clay, rammed in very closely, to exclude the air. As soon as the clay plugs of the crucibles are dry, from twenty to twenty-four of them are built up in the form of an arch in a small blast furnace; they are kept covered with charcoal, and subjected to heat urged by a blast for about two hours and a half, when the process is considered to be complete. The crucibles being now taken out of the furnace and allowed to cool, are broken, and the steel is found in the form of a cake, rounded by the bottom of the crucible.--Ure’s Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, art. STEEL.]

STAMPING-WORKS[831].

In order to separate metallic ores from the barren rock or stones with which they occur, and to promote their fusion, it is necessary that the pieces of rock or stone should be reduced to small fragments by stamping them. For those ores which occur in a sandy form, this is unnecessary; and in regard to rich silver ore, which contains very little or no lead and other metals, this process might be hurtful; for with dry stamping a great deal would fly off in dust, and with wet stamping a considerable part would be washed away by the water.

However imperfect the knowledge of the ancients may have been in regard to the fusion of ores, they were acquainted with the benefit of stamping; but the means they employed for that purpose were the most inconvenient and expensive. They reduced the ore to coarse powder, by pounding it in mortars, and then ground it in hand-mills, like those used for corn, till it acquired such a degree of fineness that it could be easily washed. This is proved by the scanty information which we find in Diodorus Siculus[832] and Agatharcides[833], in regard to the gold mines of the Egyptians; in Hippocrates, respecting the smelting-works of the Greeks[834], and in Pliny in regard to the metallurgy of the Romans[835]. Remains of such mortars and mills as were used by the ancients have been found in places where they carried on metallurgic operations; for instance, in Transylvania and the Pyrenees. The hand-mills had a resemblance to our mustard-mills[836]; and for washing the mud they employed a sieve, but in washing auriferous sand they made use of a raw hide. From the latter, Count von Veltheim has explained, in a very ingenious manner, the fable of the ancients concerning the ants which dug up gold[837].

Our works for pounding ore, at present, are stamping-mills, which consist of heavy stampers shod with iron. These stampers are put in motion by a cylinder furnished with cogs, which is driven by a water-wheel, and pound the ore in troughs lined with iron. When the ore subjected to this operation is poor, water is introduced into the troughs, which running through grates in the bottoms of them, carries with it the pounded matter into a gutter, where it becomes purified, and deposits the mud mixed with sand.

One might conjecture that this apparatus was invented soon after the invention of cylinders with cogs; but this was not the case, though I am not able to determine the antiquity of these cylinders. At any rate, it is certain that mortars and sieves were used in Germany throughout the whole of the fifteenth century; and in France, to which the art of mining was conveyed in general from that country at a late period, they were still employed about the year 1579[838]. In the oldest times men were not acquainted with the art of employing water at mines in so advantageous a manner as at present. The bellows were worked by men; and those aqueducts raised on posts, by which distant water may be made to act on machines, was not yet invented. On this account, remains of ore are found in places where the moderns, in consequence of that indispensable article water, would not be able to maintain metallurgic works[839]. According to the researches which I have hitherto had an opportunity to make, our stamping-mills were invented about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and, as appears, in Germany; but I cannot determine with certainty either the name of the inventor or his country. Those who established or introduced the first stamping-works in Saxony and the Harz are only mentioned; and these, as usual, have been considered as the inventors.

In the year 1519 the processes of sifting and wet-stamping were established in Joachimsthal by Paul Grommestetter, a native of Schwarz, named on that account the Schwarzer, whom Melzer praises as an ingenious and active washer; and we are told that he had before introduced the same improvements at Schneeberg. Soon after, that is in 1521, a large stamping-work was erected at Joachimsthal, and the process of washing was begun. A considerable saving was thus made, as a great many metallic particles were before left in the washed sand, which was either thrown away or used as mortar for building. In the year 1525 Hans Pörtner employed at Schlackenwalde the wet method of stamping, whereas before that period the ore there was ground.

In the Harz this invention was introduced at Wildenmann by Peter Philip, who was assay-master there, soon after the works at the Upper Harz were resumed by Duke Henry the younger about the year 1524. This we learn from the papers of Herdan Hacke or Hæcke, who was preacher at Wildenmann in 1572. As far as can be concluded from his imperfect information, the first stamping-work there consisted only of a stamper raised by means of two levers fixed to the axis of a wheel. The pounded ore was then thrown into a sieve, called in German the _sachs_[840], and freed from the coarser parts. But as this stamping was performed in the dry manner, it produced so much dust that the labourers were impeded by it, and the ore on that account could not be properly smelted. The business however was not given up; new improvements were made, and soon after Simon Krug and Nicholas Klerer introduced the wet method, and fortunately brought it to perfection[841].

It is said in several modern works that wet stamping was invented in 1505, by a Saxon nobleman named von Maltitz. This assertion has been so often repeated, that it was known to Gobet[842], who adopted it as truth. I have not however been able to find the historian on whose testimony it is founded; but it appears by Gauhen’s Dictionary of Nobility that Sigismund Maltitz was chief surveyor of forests at the Erzgebürge, to the electorate of Saxony in the sixteenth century.

FOOTNOTES

[831] I shall refer those desirous of being acquainted with the nature of this labour, to Gatterer’s Anleitung den Harz zu bereisen. Göttingen, 1785, 8vo. i. p. 101. [Figures of the stamping-works may be seen in Ure’s Dictionary of Arts and Manufactures, pp. 818 and 1119.]

[832] Diodor. iii. 13, p. 182.

[833] Photii Bibl. p. 1342.

[834] Hippocrates de Victus Rat. lib. i. sect. 4.

[835] Plin. xxxiii. 4, sect. 21.

[836] Gensane Traité de la Fonte des Mines. Par. 1770, i. p. 14.

[837] Von d. goldgrabenden Ameisen u. Greiffen der Alten. Helmst. 1799. This dissertation may be found also in a valuable collection of different pieces by the same author, printed at Helmstadt, 1800.

[838] See François Garrault, Des Mines d’Argent trouvées en France, Paris 1579, where mention is made only of mortars, mills and sieves. This Garrault is the first French writer on mining. His work, which is scarce, was printed by Gobet in the first part of the Anciens Minéralogistes de France, Paris 1779, 8vo.

[839] At the Nertschinsk works in Siberia, the machinery must be still driven by men or cattle, because all the dams and sluices are destroyed by the frost, and the water converted into ice. Some of the works there however have machinery driven by water during the few summer months.

[840] _Sachs_ or _sæx_ in old times denoted a cutting or stabbing instrument, such for example as _schaar-sachs_, a razor; _schreib-sachs_, a penknife. See Fritsch’s Wörterbuch, who derives _sachs_ from _secare_. May not the word σάλαξ, which in Pollux means the sieve used at smelting-works, be of the same origin? I conjecture also that the coulter of the plough, which cuts the earth in a perpendicular direction, had the name of _sech_, and that the words _säge_ and _sichel_ have an affinity to it. If this derivation be right, the High but not the Low German must have of _sachs_ made _sech_. The latter would have said _sas_ or _ses_, as it says instead of _sechs_, _ses_; instead of _wachs_, _was_; instead of _flachs_, _flas_; and instead of _fuchs_, _fos_. _Sech_ is named also _kolter_, as in the Netherlands _kouter_, which words have arisen no doubt from _culter_.

[841] Calvör Maschinenwesen, ii. p. 74.

[842] Anciens Minéral., i. p. 225.

KITCHEN VEGETABLES.

The greater part of our kitchen vegetables, that is to say those plants which, independently of the corn kinds, are cultivated as food in our gardens, are partly indigenous and partly foreign. Of the former many at present grow wild, such as asparagus; but by continued cultivation, through a long series of years, they have produced numerous varieties, which differ as much from the wild plants as the European females from those of New Zealand. Many of our indigenous vegetables are collected for food, but are not reared expressly for that purpose; and these even, in all probability, might be improved by culture. Some indeed are here and there reared in an artificial manner, though we reckon them among our weeds; for example, dandelion, _Leontodon taraxacum_, the first leaves of which in spring are employed in the northern countries as salad. In some parts of England this plant is sown throughout the whole summer; and its leaves being blanched, it is used in winter as endive. Culture frees many plants from their harsh taste, makes them tender, larger and more pulpy, and produces them at a season when the wild ones have become unfit for use.

Our foreign kitchen vegetables have, for the most part, been procured from the southern countries, but chiefly from Italy; and the number of them has increased in an uncommon degree in the course of the last two centuries. Many of them require laborious attention to make them thrive in our severe climate. On the other hand, some grow so readily, and increase so much without culture, even in the open fields, that they have become like indigenous weeds, as is the case with hops, which at present abound in our hedges. Some plants, however, both indigenous and foreign, which were formerly raised by art and used at the table, are no longer cultivated, because we have become acquainted with others more beneficial. Many of them served our forefathers in the room of foreign spices, to the use of which trading companies have accustomed us, much to their advantage and to our hurt. It is true also that many have been banished merely by fashion; for this tyrant, which rules with universal sway, commands the taste as well as the smell to consider as intolerable articles to which our ancestors had a peculiar attachment.

In the oldest times mankind were so fond of sweet things, that the goodness and agreeable taste of every kind of food was determined according to the degree of its sweetness; and such is the manner of judging even at present throughout all the East, in Africa, and in America. This is the case also among us with the greater part of the lower classes, who are not able to follow the mode of richer tables. In the northern countries this taste is almost everywhere prevalent. Thus the Swedes spoil, by the addition of sugar, costly Rhenish wine, sour kraut, and other articles, the agreeable tartness of which is gratifying to other nations. In proportion to their population and luxury, the Swedes seem to use more sugar than the Germans, and the Germans more than the English or French; and one might almost suspect that a taste for sweet things were in the inverse ratio of civilization[843]. At any rate, one can thus explain why many vegetable productions, which some centuries ago were reckoned among the most agreeable dishes, appear to us to be nauseously sweet. Skirret, which the emperor Tiberius caused to be brought for the use of his table from the Rhine, is little relished at present; and the case is the same with parsnips, some kinds of apples, and several other things.

Fashion sometimes recalls into use species long forgotten, and with the greatest success, when they are introduced under a different name. Thus, after an interval of many years, some began to cultivate again monks-rhubarb[844], and to recommend this sourish plant instead of the more savoury spinage. According to Bock, it was transplanted in the middle ages by the monks from the woods into gardens, to which it has been again brought back under the imposing appellation of English spinage.

Before the commencement of the Christian æra, when the use of sensual enjoyments was not so well-regulated and modified by religious and political principles, many vegetables and other dishes were praised and recommended by writers on agriculture and cookery, as well as by the most favourite poets and eminent authors, on account of effects which cannot at present be named, except in the writings of physicians, without disgusting the reader and incurring the imputation of indelicacy. When this mode of thinking began to prevail, people detested to see in their gardens or on their tables plants which, in consequence of indecent properties, were generally known; and by being thus disused, the knowledge of them was at length so much lost, that we know only their old names, and what the ancients have related respecting them. In this manner, many receipts in Apicius are totally unintelligible, because we are no longer acquainted with the things for the preparation of which he gives directions. Of this kind are the numerous bulbous roots (_bulbi_), which formed the most favourite dishes of the Greeks and the Romans, and which at present no botanist, much less commentator, would be able to determine. They belong to the lost arts, but not to those which were abandoned because better ones were found to supply their place. The American vanilla, which perhaps was indebted only to its high price for the permission of being mixed with chocolate, does not certainly supply the place of the ancient Megarean bulbs, as our gunpowder does that of the Greek fire.

Among those kitchen vegetables which were formerly cultivated, but at present are no more esteemed, are the following:--Winter-cresses[845], an indigenous plant, the young leaves of which, like water-cresses, may be eaten in winter as salad; also common alexanders[846], which in the seventeenth century was used instead of celery; bulbous chærophyllum[847], the roots of which are still brought to market at Vienna, where people well know what is good, and where they are boiled and eaten as salad with vinegar and oil. Rampion[848] was formerly used in the like manner. The earth-nut[849], which grows wild in many parts of Germany, is still cultivated in Holland and in some districts on the Rhine. Rocket (_Eruca sativa_), the young leaves of which were readily eaten by our forefathers as salad, is no longer esteemed, partly on account of its harsh taste, and partly on account of its nauseous smell, which resembles that of rancid bacon; it has however been still retained in Italy, “excitet ut Veneri tardos eruca maritos[850].” Vetches (_Lathyrus sativus_, and _Cicer_) are now banished from our gardens, as experience has shown that they are prejudicial to the health. When pepper was so dear, that to promise a saint yearly a pound of it was considered as a liberal bequest, economical housewives seasoned their dishes with the leaves of pepper-wort (_Lepidium latifolium_), which on this account is called at present in England _poor man’s pepper_.

Borage (_Borago officinalis_), since the fourteenth, or at least the fifteenth century, has been sown not only for medicinal purposes, but for the use of the kitchen. The young leaves, which however soon become hard, rough, and unfit for the table, were used in soup, and the beautiful blue flowers were put into salad and wine. This plant was not known to the ancients; for the conjecture that it was what they called _buglossum_, is not very probable. As far as I have been able to learn, Nicholas Myrepsus, who lived in the beginning of the fourteenth century, is the first who uses the name πουράκιον, which certainly means _borago_. But who knows whence this writer, who introduces in his works a great many new inexplicable names, some of them formed from the Greek, Latin, and Italian, obtained that appellation? Some of the old botanists have conjectured that it is derived from the word _corago_, which Apuleius, whose period is uncertain, gives as a synonym of _buglossum_. Some think that the reading in Apuleius ought to be _borago_; and others assert that _corago_ is the true name, and arose from the quality which the plant has of strengthening the heart; consequently we ought properly to read _corago_, and not _borago_[851]. It is probable that our forefathers, under the idea that their borage was the _buglossum_ of the ancients, and therefore had the property of strengthening the heart, threw the flowers into wine, that their spirits might by these means be more enlivened. Our borage is certainly a foreign plant, and Cæsalpinus said that it was brought from other countries to Italy. Linnæus[852] positively states that it first came from Aleppo; but I have not yet been able to find on what authority this assertion is founded. At present borage, at least in the German cookery, is no longer used.

Among the kitchen vegetables of which no certain traces are to be found in the works of the ancients, is spinage (_Spinacea oleracea_). Its native country is unknown; but the name is new, and certainly derived from the nature of its prickly seeds. As far as I know, it first occurs in the year 1351, among the food used by the monks on fast-days[853]; and at that time it was _Spinargium_ or _Spinachium_. Meursius found in the middle ages σπινάκιον, in a poem which he has often mentioned, but not defined with sufficient accuracy[854]. This plant seems to have been made known from Spain; for many of the old botanists, such for example as Bock, call it _olus Hispanicum_. Ruellius and others name it _Atriplex Hispaniensis_; and the latter adds, that the Arabians or Moors called it _Hispanach_, which signifies Spanish plant; it is however well known that formerly everything foreign was styled Spanish. None of the kitchen vegetables of the ancients seem to approach nearer to spinage than their _Blitum_, which Rondolet considered to be the same. But all the properties assigned to this vegetable production, namely, that it was insipid, and that on this account it was necessary to render it palatable by the addition of vinegar, pepper, and other things; that it readily multiplied; that it was indigestible and gently aperient; perfectly correspond, not only with our spinage, but with many other plants, such, for example, as our beet and orach, and the good king Henry (_Chenopodium bonus Henricus_), the young leaves of which are still dressed as spinage. It is also possible that the _blitum_ of the ancients may have been a kind of _Amaranthus_, some species of which are certainly eatable. _Blitum_, therefore, will remain as difficult to be defined as the _malva_, which was used at the same time.

The _Brassicæ_ of the ancients belonged certainly to the cabbage genus; yet no one, as far as I know, has examined botanically what is said of them, and completely proved their identity. It would however be fruitless labour to attempt to apply our modern names to the cabbage kinds of the ancients, and search out in the writings of the Greeks and the Romans those which we use at present; for by continued culture, through so many ages and in so many countries, new varieties have from time to time arisen, and old ones must have become lost; so that it is impossible for us to have all the varieties of the ancients, as it was for them to be acquainted with the whole of those produced in our times. I cannot therefore venture to assert that we still possess that kind of cabbage which the ancients, to prevent intoxication, ate raw like salad[855]. We can dress in this manner cabbage heads when they are chopped fine, but we do not know with certainty whether the ancients were acquainted with our cabbage; though Ruellius, not without probability, considered as such that species which in the time of Pliny was known under the name of _lacuturris_[856].

But even if this be admitted as true, we nowhere find any traces of that excellent preparation of cabbage called by the Germans sour kraut; though the ancients were acquainted with the art of preparing turnips in the same manner[857]. I should have been inclined to consider sour kraut as a German invention, first made in Lower Saxony, which our neighbours learnt from us in modern times, had not Bellon[858] related that the Turks are accustomed to pickle cabbage for winter food. It appears, however, that these people take the whole heads, as in Germany, but particularly in Upper more than Lower Saxony, some preserve _kumskohl_, a name which, as well as _compost_ and the French word _compote_, Frisch derives with great probability from _compositum_ (preserved).

The ancients were acquainted with curled cabbage, and even with some of those kinds which we call _broccoli_. Under this term is understood all those species, the numerous young flowery heads of which, particularly in spring and autumn, can be used like cauliflowers. Such young shoots are called _cymæ_, but not _turiones_; for the latter term denotes the first shoots that arise, like those of hops, asparagus, and other esculent plants. The _broccoli_ used at present was however first brought from Italy to France, together with the name, about the end of the sixteenth century[859].

Our cauliflower, about the end of the same century, was first brought from the Levant to Italy; and in the end of the seventeenth was transplanted thence to Germany. For a long time the seeds were procured annually from Cyprus, Candia, and Constantinople, by the Venetians and Genoese, who sent them to every part of Europe, because at that time the art of raising seed was not understood[860]. Prosper Alpinus, in the year 1588, found abundance of this vegetable in Egypt, and from his account there is reason to conjecture that it was then very little known in Europe. Conrad Gesner seems not to have been acquainted with it; at any rate it is not mentioned by him in a list of the cabbage kind of plants[861]. Even in the time of Bauhin it must have belonged to those vegetables which were scarce; because he has been so

## particular in naming the garden in which he saw it. Von Hohberg, who

wrote about 1682, says that cauliflower, a few years before, had been brought to Germany for the first time[862].

It would be difficult to define all the species of the cabbage kind, the leaves and flowers of which were used by the ancients as food; but it would be a task still more arduous to determine those which have esculent roots. To render this clear, and to show what information I have been able to obtain on the subject by my researches, I must venture to indulge in a little botanical criticism. Our plant-connoisseurs have unfortunately not yet condescended to examine the class of kitchen vegetables; though it would certainly be rendering a far greater service to botany, and promote its utility much more, to describe and delineate all the species, varieties, and deviations, than to give new names to a dozen of new genera from Polynesia. According to the Linnæan system, we have at present the following species of the cabbage, which have been adopted by all botanists, without further observation.

First, _Brassica oleracea_, to which belong all those kinds the leaves and flowers of which are eaten. It is certainly probable that all these have been gradually produced from one parent stock, which it is now impossible perhaps to find in its original wild state. A similarity is remarked between all these kinds; and with a little ingenuity one might form a genealogical tree of them, as Buffon has done in regard to the race of dogs; but a genealogical tree without proofs is of as little value in natural history as in claims for hereditary titles or estates. At present, in our system, we must admit that such plants as always grow up from their seeds, without variation, and do not pass into other forms, are peculiar species; but this will not prove that these supposed species were not originally produced from one maternal stem; for the variation of the succeeding plants took place gradually; and the later ones always deviated more and more from the parent stock. Who knows how many steps and gradations were necessary before cabbage, savoys, and cauliflower were produced from our common colewort? Not fewer, perhaps, than were required to produce white men from Moors, or the terrier and lap-dog from the bull-dog.

I shall call the mother plant, or original species, A, which by unknown causes has produced B, and the latter by continued and frequently changed culture has become C; from this has been produced D, and from this E, and from this F, &c. Now as we are unacquainted with the art of changing A into F, and F into A, we believe that F is a species really different from A. As we here compare two distant links of a chain, the various parts of which increase very gradually, we find them so different, that it is impossible for us to consider them as the same. But sometimes, perhaps, F changes again into E; E into D; D into C; and C into B or into A. Perhaps also B may be again produced from A, or F from E. Had a botanist observed this by experience, he probably would have no hesitation to consider B, C, D, E, and F as varieties of A. But such observations seldom occur; we have not the power of making them according to our pleasure, for we do not know all the causes by which these numerous variations are produced. The few observations which have been made no one has yet collected, compared, and employed for establishing any certain conclusions. The division, therefore, of the cultivated plants into species and varieties would be a fruitless and uncertain undertaking, respecting which one ought not to dispute without sufficient proofs.

It is needless to refer to the form, colour, smell, and taste of the leaves, flowers, and roots. That the indented leaves, such as those which all the cabbage species have, are most liable to change, is shown by experience. The colour is no less variable; and Reichard, who had a great belief in the perpetuity of the species of plants, asserts, that in the same country and climate he could produce from the seeds of red cabbage and black radishes, white cabbage and white radishes[863]. The production and change of the hermaphrodite plants is so well known that it is only necessary to mention them. The smell, for example; but the musky smell of cabbage establishes no essential difference. Nay, a plant may entirely lose its odorous principle, _spiritus rector_, and yet retain its old form, as well as all its other component parts and properties[864]. In sandy soil the smell of plants is often entirely lost; and the taste is frequently changed, according to the nature of the land and the manure. The most powerful medicinal plants are those which grow wild in their native country, and not those reared in rich gardens, where many poisonous plants become eatable. Even the duration does not always determine the difference of the species. Thus it is certain that winter and summer rape are the same plants, though the former is a biennial and the latter an annual. Where then are the proofs in regard to the cabbage kind, and, in general, those which show that different plants are species of one genus, and others only varieties? Precision or certainty in systems can be expected only by novices; but in botany the case is the same as in every other science, mathematics excepted; the more we learn, the more uncertainty we discover, and the more circumscribed is the real knowledge which we acquire. It is necessary that this should be known to those who may take the trouble to examine the history of kitchen vegetables and other œconomical plants; and therefore I shall offer no apology for having entered into this botanical disquisition.

To the _Brassica oleracea_ belong two plants which are used in the same manner as turnips or roots. The first is the turnip-cabbage, _kohlrabi_ above the earth (_Brassica gongylodes_), the stem of which swells out, above the earth, into a thick pulpy turnip-like tubercle, which is dressed and eaten in the same manner as turnips. It is a monstrous excrescence of the stem, which is hereditary, like the broad stem of the Italian fennel. This turnip-cabbage was certainly not known to the ancients; it occurs for the first time among the botanists of the sixteenth century. Spielmann conjectures that it was brought from the Levant during the crusades; but it was known at too late a period to warrant this opinion.

Still newer is that variety called _kohlrabi_, subterranean or turnip-rooted cabbage, the stem of which produces a similar tubercle at the surface of the earth or immediately under it. In my opinion, it was first described by Caspar Bauhin, in the year 1620, under the name _napo-brassica_, which it still retains, as a new species, to which he was not able to assign any synonyms. He says that this turnip was cultivated on the Bohemian frontiers, where it was called _Dorsen_ or _Dorschen_; and the same name is given to it there at present, as is confirmed by Mehler, in whose work there is a good figure of it[865]. In Germany it is commonly called _Steckrübe_, and, as is said, was first made known there about the year 1764 by the Bohemian glass-dealers.

The second cabbage species in the Linnæan system is the _Brassica napus_, a plant which grows wild on the sandy sea-coasts of England, as well as in the island of Gothland, and which in many of the northern countries is cultivated for the oil obtained from the seeds, under the name of winter and summer rape. When thinly planted in a nourishing soil it produces esculent roots, which have a somewhat harsh taste, and properly in German it ought to be called _Steckrübe_. Such is the name given to it in the works of all the old writers by whom it was first mentioned; and it is called so at present in Bohemia, where it is cultivated, as well as _kohlrabi_ under the earth, which in some parts of Germany is improperly named _Steckrübe_, and a proper distinction is made between the two species[866]. This kind, the real _Steckrübe_, is never very thick, being only of the size of those which grow in the Mark. The leaves arise immediately from the roots, but in the _gongylodes_ and _napo-brassica_ they proceed from the stem.

This species of turnip I did not expect to find among the ancients. I conceived that it might perhaps have been produced in the northern countries, since rape began to be cultivated for oil. Afterwards this plant may have become so much domesticated among us, as to be found not unfrequently in a wild state. Some person may then have easily remarked the pulpy roots of plants growing in a manured soil, and making a trial of them found them well-tasted. When first cultivated, it must have been observed that their harsh taste was moderated, sometimes more and sometimes less, in a sandy soil, and rendered in some degree aromatic; by which means they acquired so great a superiority to the common and almost insipid rape, that they were brought to the first-rate tables under the name of the Markish, Teltow, Borsfeld, Bobenhäuser and Wilhelmsburg rapes. In each country they were named after those places where they acquired the best savour; and this was the case only where the soil consisted of clay mixed with more or less sand. From such districts large quantities of them were sent to a great distance; but perhaps never in more abundance than from Teltow, in the Middle Mark, which small town sold to the amount of more than two thousand dollars, chiefly to Berlin and Hamburg; and from Hamburg these agreeable roots were frequently sent to both the Indies. Around Stendal also, in the Old Mark, they were raised in considerable quantity, but the seeds are procured there from Teltow[867]. If we wish to introduce them into our gardens, we must either mix much sand with the soil, or procure fresh seeds annually.

The Greeks and the Romans had little occasion for cultivating rape. They had other vegetables, from the seeds or fruit of which they could obtain a better oil, and in more abundance. Where the olive would not thrive, they cultivated, as at present, sesamum; or expressed oil from the nuts and seeds of the turpentine tree[868], without speaking of the many essential oils which they used for salves.

But however probable this may appear, I am inclined to suspect, that under βουνιὰς and _napus_ our _steckrüben_ are to be understood, as most of the old botanists have admitted; and that the roots of them were used for food, before the seeds were employed for making oil. The _napus_ of the ancients had long thin roots, which were so small that they could be preserved without being cut into slices; on the other hand, the _rapa_ had large conical roots, which could not be preserved till they were sliced. The _napus_, because the roots grew chiefly downwards, were sown thicker than the _rapum_. The _napus_ was cultivated only for the use of man; but the _rapum_ was raised in great abundance as fodder for cattle. Of the _napus_ there were many known varieties, of different degrees of goodness, which, as is the case at present with _steckrüben_, were named from the place where they chiefly grew. When sown late in the season, they were injured by the earth-flea; to prevent which, the young plants were strewed over with soot. Both the _napi_ and _rapa_ were buried in the earth, where they were kept in a fresh state during the winter. The former, to prevent them from degenerating, required careful cultivation; and indeed there are few kitchen vegetables which so easily change their state, according to the nature of the soil, as the _steckrüben_.

But what opinion can be formed of the assertion, often repeated, that _brassica napus_, and _rapum_, or _rapa_, readily change into each other; consequently are only varieties or deviations of the same species[869]? I am not disposed to declare this assertion to be altogether false; though I will not vouch for the possibility of converting our Markish rapes into turnips or cabbage. I conjecture that in the oldest times, when these three plants were not so far separated from each other by intermediate species or degrees of degeneration, as they had a greater resemblance to each other, and were all nearer to the original species, such transitions were easier than they possibly could be at present.

The third species of cabbage in the Linnæan system, belonging to this place, is the _Brassica rapa_, or turnip, the roots of which, more or less conical, differ in figure, colour and taste[870]. That these roots are the same as those called by the Romans _rapa_, and by the Greeks γογγύλη or γογγυλὶς, appears to be subject to no doubt, though at present we may have a greater number of varieties.

[The turnip was well-known to the Romans, and all that can be gathered on this subject from the writings of the ancients renders it probable that it occupied nearly the same place in Roman culture as it does in British husbandry at the present day. Columella[871] recommended that the growth of turnips should be abundant, because those which were not required for human food could be given with much advantage to cattle; and both he and Pliny concur in their testimony, that this produce was esteemed next to corn in utility and value. The best grew in the country of the Sabines, and were worth at Rome a sestertius, or 2_d._ each[872].

It is stated that the Roman method of cultivation must have been superior to that of the moderns, since Pliny relates that some single roots weighed as much as forty pounds, a weight far surpassing any which has been obtained by the most skilful modern agriculturists. It is very probable that the garden culture of the turnip was introduced by the Romans into this country, and that, like some of the fruit trees which they had transplanted here, though neglected, it was never altogether lost. There is no doubt that this root was in cultivation in the sixteenth century. Whether revived by native industry, or introduced at that period by the Flemings, is a question differently answered by different writers. Towards the latter end of the sixteenth century it is mentioned by more than one writer. Cogan, in his Haven of Health, published in 1597, says, that “although many men love to eat turnips, yet do swine abhor them.” Gerarde, who published in the same year, and who had rather more rational views on the subject of plants, leads us to conclude that more than one variety was cultivated in the environs of London at that time. “The small turnips,” says he, “grown by a village near London, called Hackney, in a sandie ground, and brought to the crosse in Cheapside by the women of the village to be solde, are the best that I ever tasted.” Gerarde is silent concerning the field culture of turnips; neither is this mentioned by Parkinson, who wrote in 1629. We do not find any account of the root being grown in any part of the country until the close of the seventeenth century (_loc. sup. citat._). Turnips sometimes attain a very large size in this country; Tull[873] speaks of some weighing as much as nineteen pounds, and of often meeting with others of sixteen pounds. One was dug up in Surrey, in July 1828, which weighed twenty-one pounds, and was one yard in circumference[874]. Our more immediate ancestors appear to have applied the turnip to more extensive uses as an esculent than is done at present. It is stated, that in 1629 and 1630, when there was a dearth in England, very good, white, lasting and wholesome bread was made of boiled turnips, deprived of their moisture by pressure, and then kneaded with an equal quantity of wheaten flour. The same was had recourse to in Essex in 1693[875].]

The question whether the Greeks and the Romans were acquainted with our carrots[876], seems to be attended with more difficulties than might be expected. Whoever wishes to answer it fully, and at the same time explain the information of the ancients, and examine the opinions of the botanists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (for the modern botanists give themselves very little trouble in regard to such researches), must enter into a disquisition of such length as might be agreeable perhaps to few readers. I shall however here state what I think I know, and however little it may be, it will perhaps afford some assistance to those who are desirous to illustrate the works of the ancient physicians and agriculturists.

Dioscorides, who, next to Theophrastus among the Greeks, possessed the greatest share of botanical knowledge, was certainly acquainted with our carrot, and gave it the name of _staphylinos_. For this plant, he says, like dill, bears _umbellæ_ consisting of white flowers, which in the middle are of a purple red or almost saffron red colour. Our carrots, it is well known, have these characteristics, before the _umbellæ_, towards the time of their ripening, form themselves into a _nidus_. The plant meant by Dioscorides grew wild, but was reared in gardens, on account of its esculent root; and our carrots are certainly descended from plants which grew wild, though Miller, author of the Gardener’s Dictionary, could not succeed in rendering the small pungent roots eatable by culture.

We must believe Columella and Pliny, that the _staphylinos_ of the Greeks was, in their time, called _pastinaca_; though they give no information from which it can be concluded that their _pastinaca_ was our carrot. The former speaks of it as a plant useful to bees, which is the case also with our wild and cultivated carrots. Afterwards he tells us that it was cultivated like _siser_. Those therefore have erred who consider _siser_ and _pastinaca_ as the same plant, and believe it to be our liquorice.

That _staphylinus_, or _patinaca_, or our carrot, was by the Greeks called also _daucus_, is asserted by Pliny, as well as Galen; and in the Geoponica, _daucon_ is named among the kitchen vegetables. But Dioscorides seems to make a difference between _staphylinus_ and _daucon_, as he treats of them in different sections. He however says that _daucon_ is like _staphylinus_, and has also a white umbella. _Daucon_ perhaps may have signified a peculiar variety of carrot.

In the last place, that the _pastinacæ_, or carrots, were named also _carotæ_, is mentioned by Apicius. This word is derived perhaps from κάρτον, which in Athenæus denotes the large roots of the _staphylinus_, and also from κέρας, which occurs in Hesychius and Apuleius as a synonym of _pastinaca_, _staphylinus_, and _daucion_; but it is possible that all these words may have been corrupted by transcribers. The Germans and French however have thence formed the appellation _carrottes_. But κάρος, a plant which Galen[877] names along with the roots of the _staphylinus_ and _daucus_, signified, undoubtedly, our caraway (_Carum Carvi_). Dioscorides says that the spicy aromatic seeds of the κάρος were used, and that the roots also were boiled and eaten like carrots. Pliny calls the plant _careum_. The Greeks and the Romans therefore were acquainted with our carrots; but in my opinion they were far less used in cookery and as fodder for cattle than they are at present, otherwise they must have more frequently occurred in the works of the ancients.

But whether, under the term _pastinaca_, the ancients did not sometimes understand our parsnip, I will not venture to determine. I can only assert, with some degree of probability, that the latter is by Dioscorides called _elaphoboscon_, a name which occurs also in Pliny. The former says expressly that this plant had _umbellæ_ with yellow flowers, and large white sweet roots fit to be eaten. Now among our umbelliferous plants, besides dill, fennel and lovage, the parsnip is the only one which has yellow flowers; at any rate I know of no other with yellow flowers and esculent roots. If the parsnip had no other names among the Greeks and the Romans, it must have been very little used by them; for it is mentioned only by Dioscorides and Pliny. At present we know that it forms excellent fodder for black cattle, sheep and swine.

It needs however excite little wonder that it is so difficult to discover these plants in the works of the Greeks and the Romans. They all belong to one natural order, the species of which can with difficulty be distinguished by the most expert botanist. I mean to say, that all the umbelliferous plants are so like to each other, that they may be readily confounded. This difficulty is still further increased by the old physicians, who used a great many plants of this kind, and named them after the kitchen vegetables to which they had a resemblance, so that by these means plants totally different occur under the same name. To distinguish these, it is necessary first to examine which of them was a kitchen vegetable, and which was used in medicine.

Among our kitchen vegetables, as among the spices, there are many kinds which, at first, were known only on account of their medicinal properties, but afterwards were esteemed and cultivated on account of their good taste. Of this kind is the scorzonera[878], which became first known in the middle of the sixteenth century, in Spain, where it was considered as an antidote to the poison of a snake called there _scurzo_. A Moor, who had learnt this property of it in Africa, cured with the juice of the leaves and the roots a great many peasants bitten by snakes while mowing; but he would not discover the plant, that he might retain all the advantage to himself. Some persons, however, who followed him to the mountains, where he collected it, observed that it was the _Scurzonera_, or _Scorzonera hispanica_, so called from the name of the snake. Petrus Cannizer transmitted the plant, together with a drawing of it, to John Odorich Melchior, physician to the queen of Bohemia; and the latter sent what he had obtained to Matthioli, who at that time was not acquainted with it[879]. Soon after the roots were extolled in a particular tract by Nicholas Monardes, as a powerful remedy for the poison of snakes[880]. It is probable also that these roots were first used in Spain as food, and about the beginning of the sixteenth century were carried thence to France. The anonymous author of the well-known work Le Jardinier François, who was a gardener, and dealt in trees and seeds at Paris, boasts of having been the first who introduced these roots into the French gardens. The first edition of his book, which greatly contributed to improve gardening in France, was printed in 1616. At present the roots of the scorzonera are to be found in most gardens, but no one places faith in their medicinal virtue; and when they are occasionally prescribed by any physician for a ptisan perhaps, the other kind, the _Scorzonera humilis_, is preferred, though in the apothecaries’ shops the Spanish, taken from the gardens, is used in its stead[881].

Among our species of the _Allium_ genus, shallots, in consequence of their mild taste, are preferred. There can be no doubt that this name, as well as the French _échalotte_, is derived from _Ascalonia_; and the above species in the system is called _Allium ascalonicum_[882]. Theophrastus, Pliny, Columella, Apicius, and others, speak of a species called _ascalonia_, brought from the city of Ascalon, in Palestine, as we are told by Pliny, Strabo, and Stephanus. The last-mentioned author states it as a report, that the first bulbs were observed in that neighbourhood. These names are found in the oldest catalogues of the German garden vegetables. There is sufficient reason also to conjecture that our shallots were the _ascaloniæ_ of the ancients, and that they came originally from Palestine; especially as Hasselquist found the same species growing there wild. An important doubt, however, against this opinion arises from what is said by Theophrastus and Pliny; namely, that their _ascaloniæ_ could not be propagated by bulbs, but by seeds[883]; on the other hand, our shallots in Germany, and perhaps in every other part of Europe, never come to flower, and are obtained only by the bulbs; so that Linnæus procured the first flowers, through Hasselquist, from Palestine. But why should not all the other allium species be propagated by planting the bulbs?

[The kitchen-gardens of England were as scantily supplied with vegetables, until about the end of the sixteenth century, as the pleasure-grounds were with shrubs and flowers. “It was not,” says Hume, “till the end of the reign of Henry VIII. that any salads, carrots, turnips or other edible roots were produced in England; the little of these vegetables that was used was imported from Holland and Flanders. Queen Catherine, when she wanted a salad, was obliged to despatch a messenger thither on purpose.” Hume is not however quite correct in this point. Our ancestors, before Henry VIIIth’s time, had always their winter-cresses and water-cresses, and common Alexanders, which served them for celery; they had rampion and rocket; borage for their cool tankard, and amaranthus and goose-foot, or good Henry with sprout-kales, which they used as greens. Their fruits were neither numerous nor good, being chiefly confined to gooseberries, currants and strawberries; the apples and pears were generally indifferent, and their plums and cherries bad; although the latter are supposed to have been planted in this country so early as the year 800, at which time they were brought from Italy.

The most important of kitchen vegetables of the present day is certainly the potato. There is scarcely a doubt of the potato being a native of South America, and its existing in a wild state in elevated places in the tropical regions and in the more temperate districts of the western coast of that country. It appears probable that it was first brought into Europe from the mountainous parts of South America in the neighbourhood of Quito, to Spain, early in the sixteenth century; they were here called _papas_. From Spain they were carried to Italy, and there received the same name as the truffle, _taratoufli_. From Italy they went to Vienna, through the governor of Mons in Hainault, who sent some to Clusius in 1598. The potato arrived in England from North America, being brought from Virginia by the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584, and who returned in July 1586, and in all probability brought back the potato with them. Such is the opinion of Sir Joseph Banks; moreover, in De Bry’s Collection of Voyages[884], he describes a plant called _openawk_, which is in all probability identical with the potato. Gerarde, in his herbal, published in 1597, figures the potato, under the name of the potato of Virginia, whence he says he received the roots. The potato was first cultivated in Ireland by the grandfather of Sir Robert Southwell, from tubers given him by Sir W. Raleigh. Some time after, they were grown in Lancashire, as some say, being conveyed there through a shipwreck; thence their culture has gradually diffused itself throughout the country.

The great dependence for nourishment placed in the potato by so many of the poor, has been lately exhibited in the great distress caused by the disease of the crops. In addition to its use as a direct article of food, the potato is applied to furnish starch, which is not unfrequently substituted for arrow-root and sugar.

In the year 1619, the common market-price of the potato was 1_s._ per lb.]

FOOTNOTES

[843] [The very reverse of this is now generally admitted, and the prosperity of a country may be judged of from the amount of sugar consumed in it.]

[844] Rumex patientia. Kerner, tab. 720.

[845] Barbarea plantaginea. Kerner’s Œkonom. Pflanzen, tab. 562.

[846] Smyrnium olusatrum. Kerner, 356.

[847] Chærophyllum bulbosum. Kerner, tab. 299. Jacquin, Flora Austriaca, i. tab. 63.

[848] Phyteuma spicata. Kerner, tab. 153.

[849] The tuberous roots of the Lathyrus tuberosus. Kerner, tab. 328.

[850] Columella. x. 109. Virgil, Moretum, 85.

[851] Apuleius de Virtute Herbar. cap. 41. Plinius, xxv. 8.

[852] Spec. Plantarum.

[853] Du Cange.

[854] Meursii Glossar. Anonymus de vulpe et lupo. In p. 657, he says that this poem was printed, but where we are not told.

[855] See the passages quoted by Niclas in Geopon. v. 11. 3, p. 345.

[856] Plin. xix. 8. sect. 41. The same species is mentioned by Columella, x. 138. But of red cabbage no account is found in any ancient author.

[857] Columella, xii. 54. Pallad. Decem. 5. Nicander in Athenæus, iv.

[858] Bellonii Obs. Itin. iii. 27.

[859] Menage, Dict. v. Broccoli.

[860] This is stated in Vincenzo Tanaro Economica del Cittadino in Villa. This book, written about the year 1642, was often printed; but I have never been so fortunate as to meet with a copy. The eleventh edition, being the latest, was printed at Venice in 1745, 4to. In Nonnii Diæteticon, p. 49, the first edition of which was printed in 1627, it is said that the seeds of cauliflower were brought from Italy to Antwerp, where no seed was raised, or such only as produced degenerate plants.

[861] In Horti Germaniæ, at the end of Cordi Opera, p. 250, B.

[862] Georgica Curiosa, Nurnberg, 1716, fol. i. p. 643.

[863] Land- und Gartenschatz, p. 84.

[864] See the ingenious experiments of Dalibert in Mémoires présentées sur les Mathématiques et la Physique, tom. i. Strong-smelling plants lose their smell in a sandy soil, and do not recover it when transplanted into a rich soil. On this Rozier founds his proposal for improving rape-oil.

[865] Mehler, p. 16, tab. vi.--Kerner, tab. 312.

[866] A good figure is given by Mehler, tab. viii.

[867] See a figure of the Teltow rapes in Kerner, tab. 534.

[868] Geopon. lib. ix. 18, p. 611. The oil of turpentine of the present day is obtained from the resin by distillation, a process with which the ancients were unacquainted.

[869] Columella, ii. 10, 22-25; xi. 3, 60; xii. 54.--Plinius, xx. 4; and xix. 10 and 5. That I may not be too prolix, I shall leave the confusion which occurs in the works of the ancients untouched.

[870] See the figure of the _Mayrübe_ in Kerner, tab. 553; of the _Guckelrübe_, tab. 516; and Mehler’s tab. vii. (or 37.)

[871] De Re Rustica, lib. ii. cap. 10.

[872] Hist. Nat. lib. xviii. c. 13; lib. xix. c. 5.

[873] Tull’s Horse-Hoeing Husbandry.

[874] Gard. Magaz.

[875] Lib. Entert. Knowledge, VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES.

[876] Kerner’s Œkonom. Pflanzen, tab. 319.--Mehler, tab. x. (or 40.)

[877] De Aliment. Facult. ii. 67. Galen has ἡ καρὼ, not κάρος.

[878] Kerner, tab. 91.

[879] Matthioli Epist. Med. v. p. 209; in Opera, Basil. 1674, fol.

[880] A translation, printed for the first time in Spanish in 1569, is in Clusii Exotica, p. 15.

[881] Murray, Apparat. Med. i. p. 160.

[882] Kerner, tab. 307.

[883] _Cepæ fissiles_, or _scissiles_, or _schistæ_, are leeks, as Theophrastus tells us himself, which, when the leaves become yellow, are taken from the earth, and being freed from the leaves, are separated from each other, then dried, and in spring again put into the ground. If we believe that the _ascaloniæ_ can be propagated only by seed, we must certainly read in Theophrastus μόνα γἀρ οὐ σχιστὰ, as Scaliger has already remarked.

[884] Vol. i. p. 17.

KNITTING NETS AND STOCKINGS. STOCKING-LOOM.

In the art of weaving, the woof is thrown or made to pass through the numerous threads of the warp[885], and is retained by them; but in knitting there is only one thread, which is entwined in so ingenious a manner that it produces a tissue approaching near to cloth, both in its use and appearance, though it cannot be called cloth, because it is formed without warp and woof. I will not, however, quarrel in regard to names: the spider’s web is produced by only one thread, but in a manner indeed which differs as much from weaving as it does from knitting; and it is not known with certainty whether Arachne found out the art of weaving cloth or of making nets[886].

There are two methods of knitting, essentially different from each other; the one employed in making nets, and the other in knitting stockings. In the former the twine is knotted into meshes by means of a knitting-needle; whereas in the knitting of stockings the meshes are produced without knots. Hence it may be readily comprehended why knit stockings can be so easily and so speedily un-knit, in order that the thread may be employed for new work; and why in nets this is impossible. The knots which prevent it render it on the other hand possible for nets to be cut or torn asunder, without destroying more meshes than those immediately exposed to the force applied. One may easily see also the cause why things knit in the same manner as stockings can be stretched without being torn, and, like elastic bodies, again contract as soon as the action of the distending force ceases. On this account no kind of cloth has yet been found fitter for gloves, stockings, garters and bandages. When not too closely knit, single parts can be extended without injury, as the threads in the neighbouring meshes give way, and the meshes become narrow or contracted. This, on account of the knots, is not possible in knitting of the first kind, which however produces the best nets, as the meshes suffer the water and mud, together with the fish that are too small, to pass through them, and retain only the fish that are larger. A captured fish, in order to escape, must tear to pieces, after each other, as many meshes as are equal to the circumference of its body. Were the net formed in the same manner as a stocking, a single mesh, if torn, would suffer it to pass through[887].

It is to be reckoned among the advantages of the present age, that a readiness in knitting is required as a part of female education in all ranks; and it may be easily acquired even by children, with the assistance of an expert and indulgent instructress. It is however astonishing that this art has not been banished by the refinement of modern manners, especially as so much of the time of young females is employed in the reading of novels and romances. But it is to be observed, that this occupation, which, with a little practice, becomes so easy that it may be called rather an amusement, does not interrupt discourse, distract the attention or check the powers of the imagination. It forms a ready resource when a vacuity occurs in conversation, or when a circumstance takes place which ought to be heard or seen, but not treated with too much seriousness: the prudent knitter then hears and sees what she does not wish to seem to hear or to see. Knitting does no injury either to the body or the mind, the latter of which suffers from romances. It occasions no prejudicial or disagreeable position, requires no straining of the eye-sight, and can be performed with as much convenience when standing or walking as when sitting. It may be interrupted without loss, and again resumed without trouble; and the whole apparatus for knitting, which is cheap, needs so little room, and is so light, that it can be kept and gracefully carried about in a basket, the beauty of which displays the expertness, or at any rate the taste, of the fair artist. Knitting belongs to the few useful occupations of old persons, who have not lost the use of their hands. Those who wish to reproach the fair sex for the time they waste in endeavouring to please the men, ought not to forget that the former know how to occupy those moments which the latter devote, not to labour, but to social enjoyment or pleasure, or which would be otherwise lost--the time in which the male sex are able to do nothing that is useful. No one, however, will seriously object this to the male sex, whose daily occupations tend so much to exhaust the spirits; but is it not to be regretted that those who, in consequence of their situation, perform properly no work, who are scarcely under the necessity of thinking, and who rather become corrupted through idleness, do not employ their vacant hours in knitting, in order to gain money? What I mean to say is, should not servants, soldiers, shepherds, and the male children of the peasants who are unfit for hard labour, learn to knit, that they might earn something for themselves and their families? A sale for knit articles, stockings, mitts, caps, nets and fine lace can never be wanting. My panegyric, however, on knitting is applicable, strictly speaking, to the second kind only, which surpasses the first in utility, but is a much more modern invention; for fishing and hunting were the oldest occupations, and mention of nets occurs in the earliest writings.

It is not improbable that the people who resided on the banks of rivers abundant in fish, endeavoured to catch them at first with baskets, such as those which most of the Indians know how to make, or with other vessels which suffered the water to run through them; but that in the course of time a piece of thin cloth was employed, and at a still later period, what was far more convenient, nets. Mention however of fishing and hunting nets occurs very often in the Scriptures; and in some passages it is clearly proved that we are to understand by them such as were knit. But I shall leave commentators to determine whether gins composed of ropes or cords[888] are not often meant where the translators have introduced nets. The former are certainly older than the latter; they were long used both in hunting and in war, and are still employed among some savage tribes who are not acquainted with fire-arms.

That nets, however, should be invented at an early period needs excite no wonder, for they have been found in modern times among very rude nations. Wafer[889] saw some among the American savages which were made of the bark of a tree; and the Greenlanders made some of the same kind of the hair of the whale’s beard, and of the sinews of other animals. I shall omit here what has been said in regard to nets in the works of the ancients, and particularly in those which treat on fishing and hunting. The Latins say _texere retia_; and Pliny calls the yarn or twine of which nets were made _stamen_; yet I am inclined to believe, that both the Greeks and the Romans made their nets in the same manner as we do at present.

Weaving, properly so called, is out of the question; and it appears that these words were used in a very general sense, because there was then no term of art to denote knitting. At any rate, I cannot believe that the far more ingenious process by which our lace-weavers prepare the netted scarfs used by military officers was then known, as Braun seems to think[890]. Meshes were called by the Latins _maculæ_ and _nodi_; but I as little understand what Pliny says, “retia succino nodantur,” as the supposed explanation of Hardouin, “retia nodos e succino habebant[891].” The author alludes here perhaps to some ornament added to those nets which were drawn round the boxes or seats of the senators. Some manuscripts read _notantur_: I should have preferred _ornantur_.

The art of making nets of fine yarn, silk, or cotton, by the process of knitting, and employing them as articles of dress or ornament, is not an invention of modern luxury. I remember to have seen in old churches retiform hangings, and on old dresses of ceremony borders or trimming of the same kind, which fashion seems alternately to have banished and recalled. That in the middle ages the mantles of the clergy had often coverings of silk made in the same manner as fishing-nets, has been proved by Du Cange[892]. I suspect also that the transparent dresses used by the ladies, more than four hundred years ago, to cover those beauties which they still wished to be visible, were nets of this kind[893].

Far more ingenious and of much later invention is that art which was undoubtedly first employed in making stockings, and on that account called stocking-knitting. That the Romans and most of the ancient nations had no particular clothing for the lower part of the body, is so well known, that it is unnecessary for me to repeat the proofs. Their legs however did not suffer more from the cold than our hands when they are not covered by gloves, or than the feet of the Franciscans at present; and what is common is not indecent. It is well known that the northern nations first had hose or trowsers, which covered not only the legs but the thighs and loins; and it was not till a few centuries ago, that from this article of dress people began to make two; the upper part retained the old name, and the lower, that which covered the legs, was called in German _strumpf_, _truncus_, which word Maler in his Dictionary explains by _halbhosen_, half-hose, and _hosenstrumpf_. The diminutive _strümpfle_ signifies, according to this author, hose that reach to the calf of the leg. The first stockings were of cloth, and made by the tailors; consequently they were not so commodious as our knit-stockings, which, for the reason already mentioned, become closely contracted, without pressing the foot or impeding a person in walking.

It is more than probable that the art of knitting stockings was first found out in the sixteenth century, but the time of the invention is doubtful; it is also uncertain to what people we are indebted for it, and the name of the inventor is entirely unknown. Savary appears to be the first person who hazarded the conjecture[894], that this art is a Scottish invention, because the French stocking-knitters, when they became so numerous as to form a guild, made choice of St. Fiacre, a native of Scotland, to be their patron; and besides this, there is a tradition, that the first knit stockings were brought to France from that country. However this may be, it is certain that the first letter of foundation for this guild, named “la Communauté des Maitres Bonnetiers au Tricot,” is dated the 16th, or, as others say, the 26th of August 1527. St. Fiacre, I shall here remark, was the second son of Eugenius, who is said to have been king of Scotland in the beginning of the seventh century; he lived as a hermit at Meaux in France, and his name in the sacred calendar stands opposite to the 30th of August[895]. It must however be acknowledged that Savary’s conjecture rests only on a very slight foundation.

Somewhat more probable is an opinion, which has been long prevalent in England, and is supported by the testimony of respectable writers. Howell, in his History of the World, printed in 1680, relates that Henry VIII., who reigned from 1509 to 1547, and who was fond of show and magnificence, wore at first woollen stockings; till by a singular occurrence he received a pair of knit silk stockings from Spain. His son Edward VI., who succeeded him on the throne, obtained by means of a merchant named Thomas Gresham, a pair of long Spanish knit silk stockings; and this present was at that time highly prized. Queen Elizabeth, in the third year of her reign, that is in 1561, received by her silk-woman, named Montague, a pair of black silk knit stockings, and afterwards would not wear any other kind[896].

This information is confirmed by another account. It is related in Stow’s Chronicle, that the earl of Pembroke was the first nobleman who wore worsted knit stockings. In the year 1564, William Rider, an apprentice of Master Thomas Burdet, having accidentally seen in the shop of an Italian merchant a pair of knit worsted stockings, procured from Mantua, and having borrowed them, made a pair exactly like them, and these were the first stockings knit in England of woollen yarn.

From this testimony, it has been hitherto believed in England that knit stockings were first made known there under Henry VIII.; that they were brought from Spain to that country; and that the invention belongs, in all probability, to the Spaniards. Were this really the case, one might conjecture that the first knit stockings known in England were of silk, though the imitations made by Rider were of wool. For under Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth, silk stockings only are mentioned; and at that period silk, and not woollen articles, were imported from Italy and Spain. Did the invention belong to the Spaniards, I should be inclined to conjecture that these people obtained it from the Arabians, to whom we are indebted for many useful and ingenious arts. But at any rate the conjecture of Savary falls to the ground; for as the French had a stocking-knitters’ guild as early as 1527, it is highly improbable that the English, forty years after, or about the year 1564, should have been unacquainted with the invention of their nearest neighbours, the Scots.

Some years ago, however, several learned men in England were led, by a singular circumstance, to collect information in regard to the antiquity of the art of knitting stockings. I here allude to the forgeries of Thomas Chatterton, who was born on the 20th of November 1752, and terminated his unfortunate life by suicide on the 24th of August 1770. This ingenious youth published some poems which he pretended were written by Thomas Rowley, who lived in the reign of Edward IV., that is about the year 1461. Many literary men denied the authenticity of these poems, though they possessed great beauty; proclaimed Chatterton to be a second Psalmanasar; and justified their opinion by the circumstance of knit stockings being mentioned in them. This they said was an anachronism, as the invention of knitting stockings, according to Howell and Stow, must be a century later than the supposed poet Rowley. Others, who supported the genuineness of these poems, endeavoured on that account to make the invention older, and collected information in regard to the history of it, from which I have made the following extract[897].

In the beginning of the sixteenth century the people of Scotland had breeches, in the proper sense of the word, and wore a kind of stockings; for Hector Boethius, who was professor at Aberdeen in 1497, relates that the Scots wore hose which reached only to the knee, consequently stockings made of linen or woollen, and breeches chiefly of hemp[898].

These particular articles of dress were usual at that time even in England; for in the year 1510 king Henry VIII. appeared, on a public occasion, with his attendants, in elegant dresses, in the description of which breeches and hose are particularly mentioned[899].

In the year 1530, the word _knit_, applied to stockings, must have been common in England; for at that time John Palsgrave, French master to the Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII., published a grammar, in which he stated that this word in French was applied to the making of nets as well as of caps and stockings.

From a household book of a noble family in the time of Henry VIII., we learn that knit stockings, both for grown-up people and children, were sold at so low a price that it cannot be supposed they were foreign articles[900].

In the reign of Edward VI. various kinds of knit articles must have been made in England, as appears by some regulations relating to trade and manufactures issued in 1552[901].

It nevertheless can be proved, that in the fifth year of the reign of queen Mary, that is in 1558, there were many who wore stockings of cloth; for Dr. Sands, who was afterwards archbishop of York, sent for a tailor to measure him for a pair of hose[902]. This might serve to confirm the assertion of Stow, that stockings were not knit in England till six years after. But according to the testimonies already produced, this cannot be true. It is much more credible, that the clergy and old people, who are not ready to adopt new modes, wore some years later the old-fashioned stockings of cloth, which in all probability were similar to our gaiters.

It might be mentioned, as a further proof, if necessary, of breeches and stockings being considered, long before the reign of queen Elizabeth, as separate parts of dress, that in the catalogue then drawn up of the revenue of the bishop of St. Asaph, it is stated that he received as a perquisite, on the death of every clergyman who had a living, his best breeches and stockings[903].

About 1577, that is ten years after the period of the invention as given by Stow, knitting must have been common throughout all England, and practised even in villages. The bark of the alder was used by the wives of the peasants for dyeing the stockings which they had knitted[904].

According to the well-known poet George Gascoigne[905], the greatest ornaments in dress, about the year 1576, were knit silk stockings and Spanish leather shoes.

About 1579, and not 1570 as stated in the Gentleman’s Magazine, when queen Elizabeth was at Norwich, several female children appeared before her, some of whom were spinning worsted yarn, and others knitting worsted yarn hose[906].

The art of knitting stockings would be much older in Germany than in France or in England; and Chatterton, at any rate, would be freed from the charge of committing an anachronism, were it true, as Micrælius wrote in the year 1639, that the consort of the duke of Pomerania, who died in 1417, when she could no longer sew or embroider amused herself with knitting[907]. But it is very probable that this good man committed an anachronism, like Chatterton; and, in order to show the industry of the duchess, named those occupations which were usual in his own time.

In Germany, as far as I know at present, stocking-knitters occur for the first time about the middle of the sixteenth century, under the name of _hosenstricker_, a term which in Lower Saxony is still not uncommon. At Hamburg the people say _hasenknütter_, and use the word _hase_ for stockings. In Berlin there were stocking-knitters about the year 1590. In many countries they had a particular guild; and this is the case at present in the duchy of Wirtemberg, where they are entirely different from those who work at the loom, and who are called _stocking-weavers_. Each have their own regulations, in which it is ordered that the stocking-knitters shall wear no articles wove, that is knit, in a loom, and the stocking-weavers no articles knit with the hand. That knitting however may be left free, as an occasional occupation to every one, the following words are inserted in the regulations of the stocking-knitters:--“Poor people, who through want of other means procure a subsistence by knitting stockings, and those who at the gates keep watch for themselves or others, and at the same time knit, shall be at liberty to wear whatever they make with their own hands.”

The German terms of art which relate to knitting are older than the art itself, for they are all borrowed from the making of nets; _knütten_, _knüteisen_, _knütholz_, _knütspan_, _stricken_ and _stricknadel_, and also _maschen_, are all terms which occur in the fishing-regulations of Brandenburg for the year 1574, and no doubt earlier. The _tricoter_ of the French had the same origin as the German word _stricken_: _Trica_ was a lock of hair, a noose; and _tricare_ signified to entangle, and deceive. _Lacer_ is derived from _laqs_, a rope, a noose; and this comes from _laqueus_. The English word _stocking_ is derived from _stock_, _truncus_, the trunk of a tree, a word still retained by the German foresters, who in the Low German speak of rooting out _stocks_.

Silk stockings, however, in consequence of their high price, were for a long time used only on very grand occasions. Henry II., king of France, wore such stockings for the first time at the marriage of his sister with the duke of Savoy in 1559[908]. In the reign of Henry III., who ascended the throne in 1575, the consort of Geoffroy Camus de Pontcarre, who held a high office in the state, would not wear silk stockings given to her by a nurse, who lived at court, as a Christmas present, because she considered them to be too gay. In the year 1569, when the privy-counsellor Barthold von Mandelsloh, who had been envoy to many diets and courts, appeared on a week-day at court with silk stockings which he had brought from Italy, the margrave John of Custrin said to him, “Barthold, I have silk stockings also; but I wear them only on Sundays and holidays.” The celebrated Leonard Thurneisser, however, who lived at the court of Brandenburg about the end of the sixteenth century, wore silk stockings daily, and in general dressed very magnificently in silk and velvet.

Knitting with wires, the method of which I have hitherto spoken, has always appeared to me so ingenious, that I conceived the inventor of it must have had a pattern to serve as a guide. This pattern I think I have discovered. Wire-workers, and other artists who used wire, exercised their ingenuity some centuries ago, more than at present, in making wire-screens in various ways; and it must be confessed that many of them produced articles, which even at present, though not suited to the modern taste, deserve admiration. Works of this kind may still be found in old churches. The art of making them has often been considered as too difficult for human hands; and hence popular tradition has asserted that the artists were assisted by the devil. A tale of this kind is still related, though no longer believed, to those whose curiosity induces them to view the wire-screen which surrounds the baptismal font in St. Mary’s church at Wismar, and which is plaited or wove in so ingenious a manner, as if with ropes, that neither the beginning nor end of the wires can be observed. A similar legend is told to strangers when shown the screen around the pulpit in the cathedral of Lubec, which, according to the inscription, was made in 1572. It is not improbable that, among works of this kind, some may be found made with meshes, as if formed by knitting. Our pin-makers can construct some much more ingenious. That I might be better able in my technological lectures to convey to my pupils an idea of knitting, I made a drawing on the subject, and caused a pin-maker to weave for me a small screen of brass wire. This work is easy, because it is executed in a frame of strong but pliable wire. I suspect therefore that some one first tried to make an imitation of such a wire-net with yarn, and in one expanded piece, for which only two or three small sticks would be necessary. Instead of having a frame, the inventor, it is probable, fastened to his clothes the stick on which the meshes were made, or on which he knitted; but afterwards employed a sheath to perform that service. Thus, most of the Wirtemberg stocking-knitters, at present, knit with two wires and a sheath. Hence their stockings, like those wove in the stocking-loom, are sewed or have a seam behind.

Among the master-pieces of the Wirtemberg stocking-knitters, a carpet of beautiful flower-work and figures is mentioned in their regulations. It is milled, and when spread out measures three ells in length and one and a half in breadth. It is probable that some person, by repeated trials, found out the method of knitting in a circular form; but for this purpose several wires would be necessary. In order to render this improved art of knitting similar to the old method, the meshes were so arranged that the stockings seemed to have a seam, for which however there was no occasion. The sheath, which was fastened to the left side, was long retained by our knitters; but as it retarded the work, and as it was necessary to keep the body in an uneasy posture, injurious to the growth of young and industrious persons, means were devised to dispense with it and to knit with much less restraint. In this manner the art was brought to its present perfection; and it must excite no small astonishment when it is considered that it was invented all at once, and by one person.

The invention of the stocking-loom is worthy of more admiration, when one reflects that it was not a matter of accident, like most of the great discoveries, but the result of talents and genius. It is a machine exceedingly complex, consisting of two thousand parts, which, in a moment almost, can make two hundred meshes of loops, without requiring much skill or labour in the workman. There are few descriptions of this machine; and those published do not fully answer the purpose[909]. But my object is merely the question, Who was the inventor, in what country, and at what time did he live? and I can say, that after the most diligent research, it does not appear subject to any doubt, as some have hitherto believed.

Under the administration of Cromwell, the stocking-knitters of London presented a petition, in which they requested permission to establish a guild. In this petition they gave to the Protector an account of the rise, progress, and importance of their art or trade; and there can be no doubt that this well-written document contains the oldest authentic information in regard to this invention, which was then scarcely fifty years old. Every thing must then have been fresh in the memory of those by whom it was drawn up; every circumstance could easily be examined; and the petitioners must have been sensible that their misrepresentations, for which however they had no reason, could easily be contradicted. However unimportant my research may appear, it gave me much pleasure to find a copy of this petition in Deering’s Account of Nottingham, already mentioned, in which the author has collected many authentic circumstances from the records of that town, where the loom was first employed and enriched many families, and whence the use of it was spread all over England and Europe[910].

From these it appears that the real inventor was William Lee, whose name in the petition is written Lea, a native of Woodborough, in Nottinghamshire, a village about seven miles distant from the town of Nottingham. He was heir to a considerable freehold estate, and a graduate of St. John’s College, Cambridge. It is reported, that being enamoured of a young country-girl, who during his visits paid more attention to her work, which was knitting, than to her lover and his proposals, he endeavoured to find out a machine which might facilitate and forward the operation of knitting, and by these means afford more leisure to the object of his affection to converse with him. Love indeed is fertile in inventions, and gave rise, it is said, to the art of painting; but a machine so complex in its parts and so wonderful in its effects, would seem to require longer and quieter reflection, more judgement, and more time and patience, than can be expected in a lover. But even if the cause should appear problematical, there can be no doubt in regard to the inventor, whom most of the English writers positively assert to have been William Lee.

Aaron Hill seems to make the stocking-loom younger, and relates the circumstance in the following manner. A student of Oxford was so imprudent as to marry at an early period, without money and without income. His young wife, however, was able to procure the necessaries of life by knitting; but as the natural consequences of love, an increase of family, was likely to render this soon insufficient, the husband invented a machine by which knitting could be performed in a speedier and more profitable manner. Having thus completed a stocking-loom, he became by its means a man of considerable wealth[911]. But Hill, in his account, gives neither names, date, nor proofs; and as he seems to have formed it from an imperfect remembrance of what he had heard or read in regard to Lee, it is not worthy of further examination.

Deering says expressly, that Lee made the first loom in the year 1589; and this account has been adopted by Anderson and most of the English writers. In the stocking-weavers’ hall, at London, is an old painting, in which Lee is represented pointing out his loom to a female knitter, who is standing near him; and below it is seen an inscription with the date 1589, which was the year of the invention[912]. Other accounts make it somewhat later. Thus Howell, after relating that Queen Elizabeth obtained the first stockings in 1561, says that thirty-nine years after the loom was invented by Lee, in which case the period would be 1600[913]. In the petition of the stocking-knitters it is stated, that the loom, at that time, had been found out about fifty years. It is to be regretted that this document has no date; but as Cromwell reigned from 1653 to 1658, the invention would fall in the beginning of the seventeenth century. It is more probable, however, that it belongs to the end of the sixteenth.

Lee instructed his brother James in the use of the loom, and took apprentices and assistants, with whom he carried on business for some years at Calverton, a village five miles distant from Nottingham. On this account, Calverton has by some been considered as his birth-place. He showed his work to Queen Elizabeth, who died in 1603, and requested from that princess some support or remuneration; but he obtained neither, and was impeded rather than assisted in his undertaking. Under these circumstances, Lee accepted an invitation from Henry IV. king of France, who had heard of this invention, and promised to give a handsome reward to the author of it. He therefore carried nine journeymen and several looms to Rouen in Normandy, where he worked with great approbation; but the king being assassinated, and internal commotions having taken place, Lee fell into great distress, and died soon after at Paris. Two only of his people remained in France, one of whom was still alive when the before-mentioned petition was presented to Cromwell. Seven of them returned to England; and these, with a person named Aston, who at first was a miller at Thoroton, the place of his birth[914], but afterwards an apprentice of Lee, by whom he had been left behind in England, where he made some improvements in the loom, laid the foundation of the stocking-manufactory in that country. The number of masters increased there in the course of fifty years so much, that it was found necessary to unite them into one guild; for which Cromwell, however, in consequence of reasons not known, refused the proper sanction; but in 1663 they received letters patent, which gave them certain privileges to the extent of ten miles round London.

In the year 1614, the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Correr, persuaded an apprentice, Henry Mead, by the promise of five hundred pounds sterling, to go with a loom to Venice for a stated time, and to teach there the use of it. Mead met with a favourable reception in that city, and was much admired; but the loom becoming deranged, and no person at Venice being able to repair it, when the time of his agreement was expired, he returned to England. The Venetians had not resolution enough to continue the attempt; and sent the damaged loom, together with some bad imitations of it, to London, where they were sold for a mere trifle. Such is the account given in the petition before-mentioned.

Zano, however, an Italian writer[915], asserts, on the authority of information preserved in manuscript among family documents, that Correr carried two stocking-weavers with looms to Venice; that he immediately placed under them four apprentices, and when they went back to England sent with them a boy, who returned to Venice well-instructed in the art, and who continued to carry on business there with great success. Giambattista Carli of Gemona, a smith who worked in steel, saw the loom at Venice, which had been made after the model of those brought from England and sold to Francesco Alpruni of Udina. In a short time a great many stockings were manufactured there, and sent for sale, chiefly to Gradisca in Austria. But, in consequence of the poverty of the Venetian stocking-knitters, an order was issued that Carli should make no more looms; and this productive branch of business at Udina was so much deranged, that the masters removed with their looms to Gradisca, where the inhabitants of Udina were obliged to purchase such stockings as they had occasion to use.

Some years after the stocking-loom had been introduced at Venice, Abraham Jones, who understood stocking-weaving and the construction of the loom, though never regularly taught, went with some assistants to Amsterdam, where he worked on his own account two or three years, till he and his people were carried off by a contagious disease. The looms, because no one could use them, were sent to London and sold for a low price. In the petition to Cromwell the masters state, with great satisfaction, that in this manner the trade had remained in England; and, that it may be exclusively retained in their native country, they wish for the establishment of a privileged company.

It appears to me therefore proved beyond all doubt, that the stocking-loom was invented by William Lee, an Englishman, about the end of the sixteenth century; and this is admitted by some French writers, such as Voltaire[916] and the editor of the first Encyclopédie, whom the author of the Encyclopédie Méthodique however finds fault with. Other French writers, who are the more numerous party, wish to ascribe the honour of this invention to one of their own countrymen; but the proofs they bring are so weak that they scarcely deserve notice. Savary perhaps is the first person who publicly ventured to support this instance of Gallic vanity; at any rate he is quoted by the more modern writers as their authority when they wish to contradict the English.

According to his account, a Frenchman, of whom however he knows nothing further, invented the stocking-loom; but not being able to obtain the exclusive privilege of using it in his own country, went with it to England. The utility of it being soon discovered there, it was forbidden, under pain of death, to carry a loom or a model of it out of the kingdom. But another Frenchman, respecting whom he is equally ignorant, having seen the loom, the form of it made so deep an impression on his memory, that on his return he copied it exactly; and from this loom all the others used in France and Holland were constructed. Savary adds, did the invention belong to the English, who are accustomed to pay due honour to those who discover useful things, they undoubtedly could tell the name of the inventor, which however they are not able to do. It is very strange that this should be written by a Frenchman, who himself did not know the name of the French inventor, or of the person who carried back the invention. No order to prevent the exportation of the stocking-loom was issued in England so early, else it would certainly have been mentioned in the petition presented to Cromwell. It was not till the eighth year of the reign of William III., that is 1696, when looms were everywhere common, that the exportation of them was forbidden; probably because the best were made in England, and it was wished that the gradual improvement of them should be kept secret. The penalty also was not death, but a fine and confiscation of the looms.

Some have endeavoured to give an air of probability to this assertion of Savary, by the relation of an apothecary in the Hotel-Dieu at Paris. This person is said to have declared that the inventor was a journeyman locksmith of Lower Normandy, who gave a pair of silk stockings, his own workmanship, to Colbert, in order that they might be presented to Louis XIV.; but as the _marchands bonetiers_, who dealt in articles knit according to the old manner, caused several loops of these stockings to be cut by some of the servants at court, whom they had bribed for that purpose, they did not meet with approbation. The inventor was so hurt by this disappointment, that he sold the loom to an Englishman, and died an old man in the Hotel-Dieu, where the apothecary became acquainted with him. It was necessary to expose the lives of many workmen, and even of some men of learning, in order to bring back a loom to France. Romè de la Platière adds, that he heard at Nimes, that in the time of Colbert a person of that place, named Cavellier, carried the first loom to France; and that, in the course of fifty years, the number of the looms in that town and neighbourhood increased to some thousands. It appears much more certain that the stocking manufactory, as Savary asserts, was established at the castle of Madrid in the Bois Boulogne near Paris, in the year 1656, under the direction of John Hindret.

I do not know at what time the first loom was brought to Germany; but it is certain that this branch of manufacture was spread chiefly by the French refugees who sought shelter in that country after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Winkelmann says expressly, that they carried the first looms to Hesse. This is not at all improbable, because our stocking manufacturers give French names to every part of their looms, as well as to their different kinds of work. Becher boasts of having introduced the loom at Vienna, and of having first constructed looms of wood. At present many wooden ones are made at Obernhau in the Erzgebürge, and sold at the rate of twenty-eight dollars; whereas iron ones, of the most inferior kind, are sold in Vogtland for sixty or seventy.

[In 1663 a charter was granted by Charles II. to the Frame-work Knitters’ Society of London (stocking-makers), which had been refused to them a few years before by Oliver Cromwell. Six years afterwards the number of stocking-frames in England amounted to 700, employing 1200 workmen, three-fifths of whom made silk stockings, and the others worsted; for cotton was not then ranked among English manufactures. By 1714 the number of frames had increased to 8000 or 9000. Some years after this, the Frame-work Knitters’ Company attempted to control both the manufacture itself, and the making and selling of the stockings; but the project failed. By the year 1753 the number of frames in England was 14,000. In 1758 a machine for making ribbed stockings was patented by Mr. Strutt of Belper.

In 1838 stocking-frames with a rotatory action, and worked by steam, were successfully brought into use in Nottingham. Of the present extent and value of the hosiery manufacture, perhaps the best estimate is that made a few years ago by Mr. Felkin of Nottingham. This gentleman calculates the value of cotton hosiery annually made at £880,000, that of worsted at £870,000, and that of silk at £241,000. He estimates the number of stockings annually manufactured at 3,510,000 dozens; and in the production of these there are used 4,584,000 lbs. of raw cotton, value £153,000; 140,000 lbs. of raw silk, value £91,000; and 6,318,000 lbs. of English wool, value £316,000; making the total value of the materials £560,000, which are ultimately converted into the exchangeable value of £1,991,000. The total number of persons employed is 73,000.]

FOOTNOTES

[885] [It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader that the _warp_ consists of the _longitudinal_ threads of a woven fabric, which are crossed by the _transverse_ threads or woof.]

[886] Ovidii Metamorph. vi. 5-145. Plin. Hist. Nat. vii. 56.

[887] An Englishman, named J. W. Boswel, invented a machine on which sixty-eight meshes, with perfect knots, could be knit at the same time: it could be adapted also to fine works, and to lace. A description of it may be seen in the Transactions of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, vol. xiv.

[888] Many commentators on the Greek and Roman writers have fallen into mistakes respecting these noose-ropes, because they were not acquainted with the nature of them. Their use among the Parthians is confirmed by Suidas, under the word σειραὶ, p. 303; where he says that on that account they were called σειροφόροι. Josephus asserts that they were employed by the Alani, and relates that Tiridates would have been caught in this manner, had he not quickly cut to pieces the rope. Under the same head may be comprehended the _retiarii_ and _laquearii_, in the bloody spectacles of the Romans, whose method of fighting is said to have been found out by Pittacus. See Diogen. Laert. i. 74. To this subject belong the snares of the devil, pestilence, and death, in the Scriptures, and particularly in Psalm xviii. ver. 5. The _laquei mortis_ of Horace, Carm. iii. 24, 8, were hence to be explained, and not by a Hebraism, as some of the old commentators have imagined. In the ordeals of the ancient Germans, when a man was obliged to combat with a woman, the latter had a rope with a noose, which she threw over her antagonist, who stood in a pit, in order that she might more easily overcome him. That such ropes are still employed among various nations is proved by Vancouver. In Hungary the wild horses at present are said to be caught by ropes of this kind.

[889] Wafer’s Voyage. Anderson’s Iceland. The author says that the beards are cut into slips; but these slips were fish-bone, which could be made into baskets but not into nets. He certainly meant the hair on the beard, which in Holland is used for wigs.

[890] De Vest. Sac. Hebr. p. 100.

[891] Hist. Nat. lib. xxxvii. cap. 3.

[892] Rete, id est ornamentum sericum ad instar retis contextum.--Acta S. Deodati, tom. iii. Junii, p. 871.

[893] In the Limpurg Chronicle, which may be found in Von Hontheim, Hist. Trevirensis, vol. ii. p. 1084, is the following passage: “The ladies wore new _weite hauptfinstern_, so that the men almost saw their breasts;” and Moser, who quotes this passage in his Phantasien, conjectures that the _hauptfinstern_ might approach near to lace. I never met with the word anywhere else; but Frisch, in his Dictionary, says, “_Vinster_ in a Vocabularium of the year 1492 is explained by the words _drat_, _schudrat_, thread, coarse thread.” May it not be the word _fenster_, a window? And in that case may it not allude to the wide meshes? _Fenestratum_ meant formerly, perforated or reticulated; and this signification seems applicable to those shoes mentioned by Du Cange under the name of _calcei fenestrati_. At any rate it is certain that the article denoted by _hauptfinstern_ belonged to those dresses mentioned by Seneca in his treatise De Beneficiis, 59. Pliny says that such dresses were worn, “ut in publico matrona transluceat.”

[894] Dict. de Commerce. Copenh. 1759, fol. i. pp. 388, 576.

[895] Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. liii. 1783, p. 38. In the Heiligen Lexicon St. Fiacre is improperly called the son of an Irishman of distinction.

[896] Howell, in speaking of the trade in the oldest times, says, p. 222, “Silk is now grown nigh as common as wool, and become the cloathing of those in the kitchin as well as the court; we wear it not onely on our backs, but of late years on our legs and feet, and tread on that which formerly was of the same value with gold itself. Yet that magnificent and expensive prince, Henry VIII., wore ordinarly cloth-hose, except there came from Spain, by great chance, a pair of silk stockins. K. Edward, his son, was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockins by Thomas Gresham, his merchant, and the present was taken much notice of. Queen Elizabeth in the third year of her reign was presented by Mrs. Montague, her silk-woman, with a pair of black knit silk stockins, and thenceforth she never wore cloth any more.”

[897] The lines which allude to this subject are in the tragedy of Ella:--

“She sayde, as herr whytte hondes whyte hosen were knyttinge, Whatte pleasure ytt ys to be married!”

[898] In his Description of Scotland, according to the old translation, in Hollingshed, “Their hosen were shapen also of linnen or woolen, which never came higher than their knees; their breeches were for the most part of hempe.”

[899] “The king and some of the gentlemen had the upper parts of their hosen, which was of blue and crimson, powdered with castels and sheafes of arrows of fine ducket gold, and the nether parts of scarlet, powdered with timbrels of fine,” &c.... There is reason however to suppose that the upper and nether parts of the hose were separate pieces, as they were of different colours. This description stands in the third volume of Hollingshed’s Chronicles, p. 807, where it is said, speaking of another festival, “The garments of six of them were of strange fashion, with also strange cuts, everie cut _knit_ with points of fine gold, and tassels of the same, their hosen cut in and tied likewise.” What the word _knit_ here signifies might perhaps be discovered if we had an English Journal of Luxury and Fashions for the sixteenth century.

[900] Gentleman’s Magazine, 1782, vol. lii. p. 229. From an authentic and curious household book kept during the life of Sir Tho. L’Estrange, Knt. of Hunstanton in Norfolk, by his lady Ann, daughter of the lord Vaux, are the following entries:--

1533. 25 H. 8. 7 Sept. Peyd for 4 peyr of knytt hose VIII s. 1538. 30 H. 8. 3 Oct. ........ two peyr of knytt hose I s.

It is to be observed, that the first-mentioned were for Sir Thomas and the latter for his children.

[901] The act made on this occasion is not to be found in any of the old or new editions of the Statutes at Large. It is omitted in that published at London, 1735, fol. ii. p. 63, because it was afterwards annulled. Smith, in Memoirs of Wool, Lond. 1747, 8vo, i. p. 89, says it was never printed; but it is to be found in a collection of the acts of king Edward VI., printed by Richard Grafton, 1552, fol. The following passage from this collection, which is so scarce even in England that it is not named in Ames’s Typographical Antiquities, is given in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. liii.