140 Notes and Sketches. 



respectively as the patterns, which shall be marked by 

 the several Deans of Guild of the chief burghs of the 

 respective counties ; " all according to dimensions spe- 

 cified in detail in the Act. Authorised stampers, whose 

 function it was to put the official stamp on all market- 

 able webs and bundles of stockings, were appointed for 

 each district ; but though these gentlemen had to take 

 the oath de fideli, and " find bail " on their admission 

 to office, they seem not to have been universally free 

 from the suspicion of allowing doubtful goods to pass 

 occasionally ; and then marking the stamp so faintly 

 that it did not show legibly, as it ought, the initial letters 

 of the parish from whence they came. And so detection 

 of the offenders, who were liable to a pecuniary mulct, 

 was rendered very difficult or altogether impossible. It 

 was even charged against them that they did not do the 

 measuring in the manner laid down to them, and, in 

 some cases, marked a greater number of yards on a web 

 than it contained. Legislation, imperial and local, failed 

 to check the prevailing evil practices effectually, till 

 at length the Aberdeenshire manufacture of fingrams 

 got so " insufferably bad " that the Dutch market was 

 irrecoverably lost, the Hollanders declining to buy them 

 at any price. 



The growth of flax to furnish lint for manufacture 

 into family linen at least, was a branch of the agricul- 

 ture of the time, but not a permanent one. Flax- 

 growing was not much known before the middle of 

 the century, and by the end of it it was again on the 

 decline. About 1780 to 1790 as much as 400 to 500 

 acres were annually occupied with this plant generally 

 sown in small patches in the county of Aberdeen.* 

 Twenty years thereafter, by the introduction of the 

 cotton manufacture, the breadth in flax had diminished 

 to not above 100 acres; but in Angus and Mearns the 



* The Old Statistical writer for the parish of Cairney naively 

 says " The manufacture of linen has introduced a certain cleanli- 

 ness all over the country. It has almost banished the itch." 



