Vegetable substances: materials of manufactures / [Published under the superintendence of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge]. [Anon].

  • Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Great Britain)
Date:
1833
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vegetable substances: materials of manufactures / [Published under the superintendence of the Society of the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge]. [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/474 (page 4)
    ralist describes the different qualities of flax respec- tively produced by each country, with a particularity which argues that the manufacture of linen was already become an important branch of commerce to many nations. We learn from the same authority that the flax of Spain surpassed that of every other country in the fineness of its fibre, while it acquired a peculiar brilliancy by being steeped in the waters of the river which falls into the sea near Tarragona. It is curious to find how little the present manner of preparing flax differs from that described by Pliny. The linen manufactured from this substance was not in very general use as an article of clothing; but it appears to have been extensively employed in navigation. Pliny represents that ships were then “crowded with numerous linen sails, by which dan- gerous practice men courted death.” At the present day scarcely any of the sail-cloth used in the Medi * terranean is made of flax or of hemp, but of cotton. The produce of flax was introduced into England by the Romans. It was subsequently discovered that the plant itself could be successfully trans- planted to the British soil; but we may infer that it was not yet introduced into England at the time of the Norman Conquest, since it is not enumerated among the titheable articles of that period. Had it been then cultivated, there is little doubt that it would have been discovered by the clergy, and in- serted by them in their tithe list. It was not until 1175 that flax and hemp were classed by the council of Westminster among the titheable productions of the earth *. For a very long time the English government uniformly held out encouragement for the growth of flax and hemp, both in the mother country and in the colonies, with the view of supplying our manufac- * Macpherson’s Annals of Commerce.