376 On the Manufacture of Tin-plate. 
proceeds to inform us that before they were 
stopped by the patent, they had made “ many 
thousand plates from iron raised in the forest 
of Dean, and tinned them over with Cornish 
tin, and the plates proved far better than the 
German plates, by reason of the toughness 
and flexibleness of our forest iron. One Mr. 
Dison, says he, a tinman in Worcester, one 
in this opinion. He was bound as an apprentice, early in 
life, to a linen draper, but after some years he left that 
situation in disgust. Inthe year 1652 he took some iron 
works, which he carried on for several years; and during 
this period, he made regular surveys of the three great 
rivers in England, and by means of associations which 
were formed by himself, he rendered three other rivers na- 
vigable—he studied agriculture with such effect, that 
many of the arable estates in the midland counties were 
rendered doubly productive by the new methods of hus- 
bandry which he either brought from abroad, or disco- 
vered ;—he laid a plan for the junction of the Thames and 
Severn at that spot where of late years this very scheme 
has been effected ;—he proposed the cutting of several 
navigable canals, half a century before any such project 
had been executed in this country. He made the neces- 
sary surveys and planned docks for the cities of London 
and Dublin ;—besides his journey to Saxony already men- 
tioned, he went to Holland, under the patronage of the 
ancestors of some of our present nobility, to examine the 
inland navigations of the Dutch, and to investige the 
nature of their linen manufactures ;—and on his return 
promulgated the plan for a riew manufacture of linens, 
which he calculated would employ all the poor of England. 
