DICKSON ON THE HISTORY OF FLAX-CULTURE. 251 



which all the early Greek philosophers — Pythagoras, Thales, 

 Solon, and Lycurgus were instructed, and that we are in 

 debted for most of our present knowledge to the Egyptians 

 we cannot dispute; for they instructed the Greeks, who in 

 their turn through the Romans handed down knowledge 

 to us. 



The Egyptian kings lived in such opulence and ruled with 

 such power, that the stupendous and magnificent works 

 they executed, are regarded to this day as the wonder of 

 the world. Some idea may be formed of their gigantic 

 undertakings when we turn to the history of their immense 

 canals and artificial lakes, made to receive the overflowings 

 of the Nile. Their catacombs and subterranean vaults are 

 of prodigious extent. The Labyrinth consists of twelve 

 palaces, and 3,000 apartments of marble, all underground, 

 and communicating with each other by innumerable passages. 

 Above all the unequalled and stupendous pyramids, the 

 largest of which sits on a base covering ten acres of ground, 

 and measures obliquely, that is, from the base to the summit, 

 700 feet; its perpendicular height is over 500 feet. By 

 this people, and in the earliest stages of society, the art of 

 spinning and weaving must have been invented, when those 

 engaged in plantations and the labour of the fields discovered 

 that the variation in climate required a change in clothing, 

 as the skins of animals must have been too heavy for the 

 East. Under these circumstances many would have recourse 

 to experiments in order to form a suitable covering, and as 

 in the Book of Genesis we read for purposes of clothing 

 our first parents had recourse to the twisting of stems, or 

 sewing of fig-leaves, the use of the finer fibre would, in all 

 likelihood, be resorted to, and hence arise the early accounts 

 of the fine linen of Egypt. 



From the sacred volume we learn that the cultivation of 

 Flax formed a most important branch in the agricultural 



