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First Annual Report regarding New Inventions and Improve- 

 ments in the Useful Arts throughout Europe ; ordered by 

 the Society of Arts for Scotland : Being a Report on the 

 recent Improvements of the Carpet Manufacture. By Mr 

 Edward Sang, Teacher of Mathematics, and Lecturer on 

 Natural Philosophy, Edinburgh, M. S. A.* 



The progress of almost any of the arts may be safely taken 

 as an index of civilization. The arts, indeed, are so intimately 

 interwoven, that one of them can scarcely flourish without giving 

 rise to and receiving support from others. Our farms could 

 not be cultivated, nor their produce brought to market, unless 

 many preparatory labours had been gone through ; nor could 

 these labours have been attempted, until the improvement of 

 agriculture itself had procured some leisure for the human race. 

 In like manner all the arts mutually receive support from and 

 assist each other ; so that, in attempting to view the present 

 state of society, we would need to consider the arts, not in de- 

 tached pieces, but as one vast and compact whole. But if our 

 object be to compare one age with another, and to ascertain 

 the rate of civilization, as it were, we may easily select depart- 

 ments which, receiving active assistance from many others, may 

 indicate with sufficient nearness the general state of the whole. 

 There are arts, such as the manufacture of glass, which have, 

 as yet, depended so slightly upon others, as to afford no crite- 

 rion of the general progress. Our ignorance of high tempera- 

 tures, and the incorrodible nature of glass itself, have prevented 

 this important manufacture from receiving that powerful as- 

 sistance which chemistry might have been expected to have 

 yielded to it : the method of forming glass vessels has thus re- 

 mained almost unchanged, and still entirely depends on the 

 strength and dexterity of the workman. 



Not so with the manufacture of carpets : this, like the other 

 branches of weaving, has received improvements at every hand, 

 and has lately made important advances. The very fact of the 

 existence of such a manufacture speaks volumes as to the in- 

 crease of our domestic comforts. But a few generations back, 



* Read 12th August 1835. 



