LINEN

(Germ, leinwand.) A species of cloth woven with the fibres of the flax plant (Linum vsitati imum). The origin of the manufacture of linen is lost in its antiquity. In the time of Hero dot us linen was an article of export from Egypt, where it had been used from time immemorial; but it is evident that in ancient times its use was limited to the noble and the rich. In modern times linen constitutes a staple manufacture in almost all European countries; but more especially in Germany, Ru ia, Switzerland, Flanders, England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England it has been prosecuted for a very long period; but until of late years its progre has been inconsiderable, compared at least with that made in other branches of manufacture. This seems to be partly owing to the attempts to bolster up and encour age the manufacture in Ireland, partly to the absurd restric tions that were for a lengthened period laid on the importation of foreign flax and hemp, and partly to the rapid growth of the cotton manufacture — fabrics of cotton having, to a considerable extent, superseded those of linen. It is only within the last fifty years that any machinery has been used in the production of linen cloth, the first mills for the spinning of flax having been constructed at Darling ton about forty-eight years ago. X^ee Flax, Hemp.) The principal seat of the manufacture is— in England, Leeds and its immediate vicinity, and in Lancashire, Dorset, Durham, and Salop; in Scotland, Dundee, which indeed may be regarded as the chief seat of the British manufacture (see Geo. Diet., art. "Dundee"); and in Ireland, the province of Ulster. The entire value of the linen manufacture of Great Britain and Ireland is estimated at X8,000,000, and the total number of persons employed in it about 185,000. (Statist, of tXt Brit. Empire, vol. i., 679.) [s. 686]