troduced 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* 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, in the first person who

Le Siècle de Louis XIV, according to the Berlin edition of 1751. 12mo. ii. p. 118: On sait que le ministère acheta en Angle terre le secret de cette machine ingenieuse, avec laquelle on fait les bas dix fois plus promptement qu'à l'aiguille.

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 the 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 Crom

well. It was not till the eighth year of the reign of William III, that is, 1696, when looms were every where 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 lock-smith 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

* Statutes at large, vol. iii. p. 224.

↑ Journal économique, Décemb. 1767.

France. Romè de la Platiere 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,

* Beschreibung von Hessen, 1797. i. p. 391.

+ Narrische Weisheit und weise Narheit. Franckf. 1688. 12mo. p. 17. I shall in the last place remark, that Leibnitz, in a letter to Vaget, in Uhle's Sylloge nova Epist. varii arg. iii. p. 82, through a lapse of memory calls the loom, of which he wishes for an accurate description, à Scotch invention.

in the Erzgebürge, and sold at the rate of twentyeight dollars; whereas iron ones, of the most inferior kind, are sold in Vogtland for sixty or seventy.

HOPS.

My object, in this article, is not to give a history of beer, because for that purpose it would be necessary to define accurately the different kinds of grain mentioned in the writings of the Greeks and the Romans; and this would be a tedious, as well as difficult, and to me a very unpleasant labour; as I should be obliged to controvert a great many received opinions. I shall only endeavour to answer the question, Where and at what time did hops begin to be used as an addition to beer? This subject has already engaged the attention of two learned men, whose researches I shall employ and enlarge by my own observations.

*

Hops, at present, are so well known, that a

* One of these, in particular, is J. F. Tresenreuter, in A Dissertation on Hops, which was printed at Nuremberg, 1759, 4to, with a preface by J. Heumann, but without the author's name. From this has been taken the whole of what is said in the article Hops in the German Encyclopædia, though the editor, professor Murray, no doubt made some additions. I mention this, though I am under no obligation to that Encyclopædia, because many things have been inserted in it from my collections towards a History of inventions, without any acknowledgement.