AND HIS INDIAN FIBRES IN CORK. 



241 



most experienced can distinguish from the animal fabric. In 

 Lille the inventor met with encouragement, the article being 

 especially applicable to the manufacture of hats, which is 

 carried on so largely in France, and the black die which it 

 assumes being found indestructible ; but he preferred giving 

 his own country the benefit that energy, properly applied, 

 may derive from his discovery. We understand that the 

 ingenious patentee is about establishing Flax and silk manu- 

 facture on a large scale in our country. To his efforts we 

 heartily wish that success which his enterprise and his genius 

 so eminently deserve." 



The proprietor and the editor of the above impartial and 

 truly patriotic journal, being both from the north of Ireland, 

 are aware of the advantage of the Flax and linen trade to 

 that province, and their columns have ever been open to me, 

 free of any charge, for everything I wrote for insertion, calcu- 

 lated to promote in the south of Ireland similar branches of 

 industry. The want of proper machinery has been, and ever 

 will be, a barrier to the cultivation of Flax, until enterprising 

 parties, like Lord Fermoy, put their energies forward and 

 induce the owners of approved machinery to erect them 

 in proper localities. C. H. Frewen, Esq., M.P., the owner 

 of Innishannon, offered me, in 1851, 150 acres of land and 

 a mill site in the village of Innishannon, at a very small 

 rent for 99 years — the rent to be fixed by two friends — 

 and a loan of £2,000 towards building a Flax-mill. How- 

 ever, his agent, the Rev. Mr. Somers Payne (so Mr. Frewen 

 informed me) dissuaded him from carrying out his proposal, 

 otherwise, the £5,000 that I have made and expended since 

 1852 on a factory and machinery, engines and plant, &c, in 

 Grove Street, Deptford, would have been expended in 

 Innishannon ; and would have created a branch of industry 

 that must have led to the reclamation of part of the three 

 millions of peat bog spoken of by Mr. E. T. Hall, in his 

 Q 



