288 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



several daughters, even these low wages formed 

 a source of great wealth. At the age of five 

 years, a child capable of handling a needle was 

 devoted to tambouring, even though it could not 

 earn more than a shilling or two in a week ; and 

 the consequence of this was, that female children 

 were taken from school, and rendered totally 

 unfit for any social or domestic duty. The tam- 

 bouring population, was, therefore, of the worst 

 kind, and it must have been regarded as a 

 blessing rather than as a calamity, when the 

 work which they performed was entrusted to 

 regular machinery. 



Mr. John Duncan of Glasgow, the inventor of 

 the tambouring machinery, was one of those un- 

 fortunate individuals who benefit their species 

 without benefiting themselves, and who died in 

 the meridian of life, the victim of poverty and of 

 national ingratitude. He conceived the idea of 

 bringing into action a great number of needles 

 at the same time, in order to shorten the process 

 by manual labour ; but he at first was perplexed 

 about the diversification of the pattern. This 

 difficulty, however, he soon surmounted by em- 

 ploying two forces at right angles to each other, 

 which gave him a new force in the direction of 

 the diagonal of the parallelogram, whose sides 

 were formed by the original forces. His first 

 machine was very imperfect ; but after two years' 

 study, he formed a company, at whose expense 

 six improved machines were put in action, and 

 who secured the invention by a patent. At this 

 time the idea of rendering the machine automatic 

 had scarcely occurred to him ; but he afterwards 

 succeeded in accomplishing this great object, and 

 the tambouring machines were placed under the 



