in the establishment of new manufactures. He died, however, in France, before his loom was made there; and the art was not long since in no part of the world but England. Oliver the Protector made an act, that it should be felony to transport the. engine. This information I took, says Aubrey, from a weaver in Pearpool Lane, in 1656. Elizabeth, in the third year of her reign, received a present of a pair of black silk knit stockings, and from that time never wore cloth hose.

DAMASK WEAVING.

The name which this art bears shows the place of its origin, or at least the place where it has been practised in the greatest perfection, viz. the city of Damascus, in Syria; though M. Felibien attributes the perfection of the art to his countryman, Cursinet, who wrought under the reign of king Henry IV.

Damaskeening is partly Mosaic work, partly engraving, and partly carving: as Mosaic work, it consists of pieces inlaid; as engraving, the metal is indented or cut in creux; and as carving, gold and silver are wrought therein in relievo.

PARCHMENT.

This article, of so much utility, was invented by Eumenes II. king of Pergamus, B.C. 198, in consequence of the prohibition of the export of papyrus from Egypt, by Ptolemy Epiphanes. The name Pergamena has been thought to prove its invention at that place. It was anciently called membrana, which is the word used in the Greek Testament, 2 Tim. iv. 13.

MAPS AND SEA CHARTS

Were first brought into England by Bartholomew Columbus, to illustrate his brother's theory respecting a western continent, in 1489.

GUTTA PERCHA.

Gutta Percha (pronounced pertsha) possesses as great an indestructibility by means of chemical agents as caoutchouc. It has an intermediate consistence between that of leather and wood; it is capable of being softened by heat, and of regaining its primitive consistence on cooling. The Isonandra gutta, belonging to the natural order Sapotacea, is the only tree which yields gutta percha. It grows scarcely any where except in certain parts of the Malayan Archipelago, and up to the present time has been almost exclusively obtained from Singapore. It was first brought into England in the days of Tradescant, and was then call Mazer wood, and subsequently it was brought from China under the name of India rubber. In 1843, Doctors

D'Almeida and W. Montgomery drew particular attention to it, together with its singular properties, its easy manipulations, and the uses for which the Malays employed it. In 1845 the importation was only 20,600 lbs; but in 1848 it had increased to above 3,000,000 lbs.

CHIMNEYS AND CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS.

The oldest certain account of chimneys occurs in the year 1347; when at Venice a great number were thrown down by an earthquake. De Gataris says, in his History of Padua, that Francesco de Carraro, Lord of Padua, came to Rome in 1368, and finding no chimneys in the inn where he lodged, because at that time fire used to be kindled in a hole in the middle of the floor, with an aperture in the roof for the escape of the smoke), he caused two chimneys, like those which had been long used at Padua, to be constructed and arched by masons and carpenters, whom he had brought with him. Over these chimneys, the first ever seen in Rome, he affixed his arms to record the event.

It is uncertain at what period chimneys were first introduced into England, some have gone so far as to say, that they were known and used here as far back as 1300, but they do not substantiate what they write. Holinshed, who wrote in the reign of queen Elizabeth, informs us there were few chimneys, even in capital towns: the fire was laid to the wall, and the smoke issued at the roof, or door, or window. As the general class of houses at that period did not exceed one story high, where the chimney did tower above the house, it was not a very difficult matter to cleanse it: very few chimneys however did, as they terminated with the roof or gable, consequently they were easily kept clean.

A long broom, or brush, was first used for the purpose, such as we see in churches and other public buildings, and as the chimneys were built quite straight, it answered the purpose exceedingly well. Of course the party mounted the roof and swept downwards. On the accession of James I. to the English crown, the Scotch fashion of building houses, three and four stories high, was first introduced; and it was about this period that climbing boys were first employed for the cleansing of chimneys. The little sweepers, however, for the last half century have become objects of particular care with the legislature. Since the Act 4 and 5 Will. IV., no child who is under ten years of age can be apprenticed to a chimney-sweeper. Various methods, too, have recently been projected for cleansing chimneys by mechanical means, of which the most successful was that by Mr. George Smart. The principal parts of the machine are a brush, some hollow tubes which fasten into each other by means of brass sockets, and a cord for connecting the whole together.

May Day, is commonly called Chimney-Sweepers' Day. It was

on this day that their late excellent friend, Mrs. Montague,* entertained them at her house in Portman Square; she gave them roast beef and plum pudding, and a shilling each, and they danced after their dinner. In London, May Day still remains the great festival of the sweeps, who are frequently accompanied with Jack-in-the-Green, and his usual group of grotesque attendants.

PRUSSIAN BLUE.

This colour was accidentally discovered about the beginning of last century, by a chemist of Berlin, in 1740, who, having successively thrown upon the ground several liquors from his laboratory, was much surprised to see it suddenly stained with a beautiful blue colour.

Recollecting what liquors he had thrown out, and observing the same effects from a similar mixture, he afterwards prepared it for the use of the painters. From the place (Berlin) where it was discovered, being the capital of Prussia, it received the name of Prussian Blue.

LAMP BLACK.

Lamp Black, or Lamb Black, as it is usually called, is the soot of oil; it is made by burning a number of lamps in a confined place, from whence no part of the fumes can escape, and the soot formed against the top and sides of the room is swept together and collected. In England it is manufactured at the turpentine houses, from the dregs of the resinous matters prepared there, which are set on fire under a chimney, or other place made for the purpose, lined with sheep-skins,† &c., to receive the soot.

GALVANISM.

The discovery of the effects of electricity on animals, states the Eloge de Galvani, took place, at the time, from something like accident. The wife of Galvani, at that time Professor of Anatomy in the University of Bologna, being in a declining state of health, employed as a restorative, according to the custom of the country, a soup made of frogs. A number of these animals, ready skinned for the purpose of cooking, were lying, with that comfortable negligence common both to French and Italians (which allows them, without repugnance, to do every thing in every place that is at the moment most convenient), in the professor's laboratory, near an electric machine; it being probably the intention of the lady to cook them there. While the machine was in action, an attendant happened to touch with the point of the scalpel the

*A young Montague was once kidnapped and sold to a sweep, but afterwards recovered.-Ed.

†Probably lamb-skins, from whence it may have been called lamb-black.

crural nerve of one of the frogs, that was not far from the prime conductor, when the limbs were thrown into strong convulsions. This experiment was performed in the absence of the professor, but it was noticed by the lady, who was much struck by the appearance, and communicated it to her husband. He repeated the experiment, varied it in different ways, and perceived that the convulsions only took place when a spark was drawn from the prime conductor, while the nerve was at the same time touched with a substance which was a conductor of electricity.

GAS.

The existence and inflammability of coal gas have been known for nearly 200 years. In 1659, Thomas Shirley correctly attributed the exhalations from the burning well of Wigan in Lancashire to the Coal beds which lie under that part of the country; and soon after Dr. Clayton, influenced by the reasoning of Shirley, actually made Coal-gas, and detailed the result of his labours to the Hon. Robert Boyle, who died in 1691. In the year 1733, Sir James Lowther communicated to the Royal Society, a curious notice of a spontaneous evolution of gas at a colliery belonging to him near Whitehaven. But the application of gas to the purposes of economical illumination is of much more recent date, and the merit of introducing it is principally due to Mr. Murdoch. In 1792, he first tried it in Cornwall; and in 1798, established an apparatus upon a more extended scale at Boulton and Watt's foundery at Birmingham; and it was there that the first public display of gaslights was made in 1802, upon the occasion of the rejoicing for peace. These, however, were but imperfect trials, when compared with that made in 1805 at Messrs Phillips and Lee's cotton mills at Manchester, and upon the results of which all subsequent procedures, with regard to gas-lighting, have been founded.

LIGHT-HOUSES.

The most celebrated Light-House of ancient times was that erected about B.C. 283, in the Reign of Ptolomæus Philadelphus, on the Island of Pharos, opposite to Alexandria. The use of mirrors for reflecting light-houses in England, is of very recent date; and, although the idea was not suggested by the falling of an apple, nor the dissection of a frog, it owes its origin to a circumstance almost as trivial, which is as follows:-At a meeting of a society of mathematicians at Liverpool, one of the members proposed to lay a wager, that he would read a paragraph of a newspaper at ten yards' distance with the light of a farthing candle. The wager was laid, and the proposer covered

the inside of a wooden dish with pieces of looking-glass, fastened in with glazier's putty, placed his reflector behind the candle, and won the wager One of the company marked this experiment with a philosophic eye. This was Captain Hutchinson, the dockmaster. With him originated those Reflecting Light-Houses at Liverpool, which were erected in 1763.

ELECTRICITY.

The first idea given of Electricity was by two globes of brimstone, in 1467; electric stroke discovered at Leyden, 1746; first known it would fire spirits, 1756; that of the Aurora Borealis and of lightning, in 1769.

ORIGIN OF COAL.

Geologists have given great scope to their inventive faculties, in endeavouring to determine the sources and origin of coal; but every thing tends to show its vegetable origin, and specimens of a regular succession of wood, little changed, and ending with coal, in which all organic traces are lost, have occurred. And even in the most perfect coal some relic is often found, some trace of vegetable texture, some fibrous remain, that clearly announced its ligneous origin. In the leaves that appear in bovey-coal, for instance, resin and extractive matter have been found, and also a substance uniting the properties of resin and bitumen; and the same substance has been found in the principal coal-field of Staffordshire. Perhaps, therefore, antediluvian timber and peatbog may have been the parents of our coal-strata; but then, it will be asked, how has this mighty change been effected? Is it merely by aqueous agency, a kind of decay and rotting-down of the wood; or has fire been called into action, torrefying the vegetable matter, and the pressure under which it has operated, preventing the escape of volatile matter, caused the formation of bitumen? And are those reservoirs of compressed carburetted hydrogen, from which blowers result, to be ascribed to such a mode of formation !-Panoramic Miscellany.

On the authority of chronology, this useful and necessary mineral was first discovered near Newcastle, in the year 1234. Another writer says: Those invaluable black diamonds, called Coals, seem to have been known to the ancient Greeks. Theophrastus, the scholar of Aristotle, about two thousand years ago, in describing lithanthrax, or the stone coal, says: Those fossil substances that are called coals, and are broken for use, are earthy; they kindle, however, and burn like wood coals.

The primeval Britons were indisputably acquainted with this fuel, which, according to Pennant, they called Glo. The Anglo

G