KNITTING LAC. 



587 



not granted to them till 1663, when privileges were 

 secured to them to the extent of ten miles round 

 London. 



In the year 1614, the Venetian ambassador, An- 

 tonio Correr, persuaded an apprentice named 

 Henry Mead, by the promise of five hundred pounds 

 sterling, to go with a loom to Venice for a stated 

 time, and to teach there the use of it. Mead met 

 with a favourable reception; but his loom becom- 

 ing deranged, and no person at Venice being able 

 to repair it, he returned to England when his time 

 was expired, and the damaged loom was sold in 

 London by the Venetians for a mere trifle. An- 

 other account says that Correr sent a boy back 

 with Mead to England, who returned to Venice 

 well instructed in the art, which was established at 

 Udiria, and a great many stockings manufactured 

 and sent for sale chiefly to Gradisca, in Austria. 

 But in consequence of the poverty of the Vene- 

 tian stocking-knitters, an order was given to the 

 person who had made the machines, Giambattista 

 Carli of Gemona, that he should make no more 

 looms; and the business at Udina being relinquished, 

 the masters removed their machines to Gradisca, 

 where the inhabitants of Udina were obliged to 

 purchase such stockings as they wanted. 



Some years after this, a person of the name of 

 Abraham Jones, who understood stocking-weaving 

 and the construction of the loom, went with some 

 assistants to Amsterdam, where he worked on his 



own account for two years, till he and his people 

 were carried off by a contagious disease, when the 

 looms (no one understanding the use of them) 

 were sent to London and sold at a low price. This 

 was mentioned in the petition to Cromwell, and 

 the establishment of a privileged company urged 

 as the means of exclusively retaining the trade in 

 this country. 



Notwithstanding the clear and distinct account 

 of the invention of the stocking-frame by William 

 Lee, the French have laid claim to that honour; 

 as, however, they do not pretend to give the name 

 of the inventor, or the circumstances attending his 

 discovery, it is not worth while entering into their 

 pretensions. The first loom was probably carried 

 to France in the time of Colbert, by a person 

 named Cavellier, a native of Nismes ; and in the 

 course of fifty years the number of looms in that 

 town and neighbourhood increased to some thou- 

 sands. Savary asserts that the stocking manufac- 

 tory was established at the castle of Madrid, in 

 the Bois de Boulogne, near Paris, in 1656, under 

 the direction of John Hindret. Winkelmaun says 

 that the French refugees who sought shelter in 

 Germany after the revocation of the edict of 

 Nantes, carried the first looms to Hesse. This is 

 rendered probable by the circumstance that the 

 Germans give French names to every part of their 

 looms, as well as to their different kinds of 

 work.* 



LAC; a resinous substance, found upon several 

 trees and shrubs in the East Indies, and which is of 

 considerable use in various arts and manufactures. 

 It is produced by the lac insect (chermes lacca,") of 

 which the following account is given by Dr Rox- 

 burgh in the Transactions of the Philosophical So- 

 ciety 



" Some pieces of very fresh-looking lac, adher- 

 ing to small branches of Mimosa cinerea, were 

 brought to me from the mountains. I kept them 

 carefully in wide-mouthed bottles slightly covered, 

 and fourteen days from the time they came from the 

 hills, thousands of exceedingly minute red animals 

 were observed crawling about the lac and the 

 branches it adhered to, and still more were issuing 

 from small holes on the surface of the cells. By 

 the assistance of glasses, small excrescences were 

 also observed, interspersed among these holes, two 

 regularly to each hole, crowned with some very 

 fine white hairs, which being wiped off, two white 

 spots appeared. 



" The animals, when single, ran about pretty 

 briskly, but in general, on opening the cells, they 

 were so numerous, as to be crowded over one an- 

 other. The substance of which the cells were 

 formed cannot be better described, with respect to 

 appearance, than by saying it is like the transparent 

 amber of which beads are made. The external 

 covering of the cells is about the twenty-fourth 

 part of an inch in thickness, it is remarkably 

 strong, and able to resist injuries; the partitions 

 re much thinner. The cells are, in general, ir- 



regular squares, pentagons and hexagons, about an 

 eighth of an inch in diameter, and a quarter of an 

 inch deep; they have no communication with each 

 other. All those opened during the time the ani- 

 mals were issuing from them, contained in one side, 

 which occupied half the cell, a small bag filled 

 with a thick jelly-like red liquor, replete with what 

 I take to be eggs. These bags adhere to the bot- 

 tom of the cells, and have each two necks, which 

 pass through holes in the outward coat of the cells, 

 forming the excrescences we have mentioned, end- 

 ing in some fine white hairs. The other half of the 

 cells have a distinct opening, and contain a white 

 substance, like a few filaments of cotton rolled to- 

 gether, and a number of the little red insects 

 themselves, crawling about, ready to make their 

 exit. Their portion of each cell is about one half, 

 and I think must have contained nearly one hun- 

 dred of these animals. In other cells less forward, 

 I found a thick, red, dark, blood-coloured liquor, 

 with numbers of exceedingly minute eggs, many 

 times smaller than those found in the small bags 

 which occupied the other half of the cells." 



These animals undergo several changes in the 

 course of their existence . from the egg proceeds 

 the larva ; its next change is into the pupa, from 

 which, at length, the perfect insect issues. 



As an article of commerce, lac is known in 

 Europe under the names of stick-lac, seed-lac, and 

 shell-lac. The first is the lac in its native state, as 



* Magazine of Domestic Economy. 



