Chapter XII: Part 12

Without engaging to examine all the hypotheses of commentators and ancient botanists on this subject, I shall take notice of one conjecture, which, upon mature consideration, appears to have some probability. Clusius[614] is of opinion that the plant called by the botanists of the seventeenth century _Carduus chrysanthemus_, and by those of the present age _Scolymus hispanicus_, the golden thistle, is the _scolymus_ of Theophrastus; because its leaves, beset with white prickles, and its pulpy, sweet, milky roots are eaten, and excel in taste all roots whatever, even those of skirret; and because it was collected and sold in Spain, Italy, and Greece. But what has principally attracted my attention to this conjecture, is the account of Bellon[615], that this plant in Crete or Candia is called still by the Greeks there _ascolymbros_. This name seems to have arisen from _scolymos_; and besides Stapel[616] found in an old glossary the word _ascolymbros_. I am likewise convinced that, as Tournefort[617] has said, the botany of the ancients would be much illustrated and rendered more certain, were the names used by the modern Greeks known. It is certain that many old names have been preserved till the present time with little variation; but nevertheless I can as little admit the assertion of Clusius as that of Stapel; for _Scolymus hispanicus_ has neither the bottom of the calyx pulpy, nor wool adhering to the seeds, like the _scolymus_ of Theophrastus; and the young roots only can be eaten, because, like those of most plants of the genus of the thistle, they lose their milk when the flower is in bloom; lastly, the leaves retain their power of pricking, even after they have become withered.

The fourth name which, with any kind of probability, has been translated by the word artichoke is _cactus_. This plant, which, in the time of Theophrastus and Pliny, grew only in Sicily and not in Greece, had broad prickly leaves[618]; the flower was filled with a kind of wool, which, when eaten inadvertently, was pernicious[619]; the calyx was prickly: and, besides a long stem, it shot forth branches which crept along the ground[620], and which, when the outer rind had been peeled off, were eaten either fresh, or pickled in salt water[621]. The bottom of the calyx of this plant was likewise used, after it had been freed from its seeds and woolly substance[622]. It had a great resemblance to the pith of the palm-tree[623].

That the _cactus_ was different from the _scolymus_ we are expressly told by Theophrastus; and Pliny also distinguishes them both from each other and from the _carduus_. Athenæus[624] is the only author who says that the _cactus_ and the _cinara_ were the same; but he gives no other proof than a very simple etymology. It must therefore be admitted that the _cactus_ was a species of the thistle kind entirely different from any of the former.

I think I have proved, therefore, that the Greeks and the Romans used the pulpy bottom of the calyx, and the most tender stalks and young shoots of some plants reckoned to belong to the thistle kind, in the same manner as we use artichokes and cardoons; and that the latter were unknown to them. It appears to me probable that the use of these plants, at least in Italy and Europe in general, was in the course of time laid aside and forgotten, and that the artichoke, when it was first brought to Italy from the Levant, was considered as a new species of food. It is undoubtedly certain that our artichoke was first known in that country in the fifteenth century. Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1494, relates that this plant was first seen at Venice in a garden in 1473, at which time it was very scarce[625]. About the year 1466, one of the family of Strozzi brought the first artichokes to Florence from Naples[626]. Politian, in a letter in which he describes the dishes he found at a grand entertainment in Italy in 1488, among these mentions artichokes[627]. They were introduced into France in the beginning of the sixteenth century[628]; and into England in the reign of Henry the Eighth[629].

Respecting the origin of the name various conjectures have been formed, none of which, in my opinion, are founded even on probability. Hermolaus Barbarus, Henry Stephen, Ruellius, Heresbach, and others think that _artichoke_ or _artichaut_, as it is called by the French, and _arciocco_ by the Italians, is derived from the Greek word _coccalus_, which signifies a fircone, with the Arabic article _al_ prefixed, from which was formed _alcocalon_, and afterwards the name now used[630]. This etymology is contradicted by Salmasius[631], who denies that _coccalus_ had ever that signification. He remarks also that artichokes were by the Arabs called _harsaf_, _harxaf_, or _harchiaf_; and he seems not disinclined to derive the name from these appellations[632]. Grotius, Bodæus, and some others, derive it from a Greek word[633], which occurs in Alexander Trallianus, and which is supposed to signify our plant; but that word is to be found in this author alone, and in him only once; so that the idea of these critics appears to me very improbable. Frisch affirms, in his dictionary, that our modern name is formed from _carduus_ and _scolymus_ united. Ihre[634] considers the first part of the name as the German word _erde_ (the earth), because it is often pronounced _erdschoke_; but I rather think that the Germans changed the foreign word _arti_ into the word _erde_, which was known to them, in the same manner as of _tartuffolo_ we have made _erdtoffeln_[635]; besides, Ihre leaves the latter part unexplained[636]. In the seventeenth century the plant was often called _Welsch distel_ (Italian thistle), because the seeds were procured from Italy, and also _Strobeldorn_, a word undoubtedly derived from _strobilus_.

Were the original country of the artichoke really known, the etymology of the name, perhaps, might be easily explained. Linnæus says that it grew wild in Narbonne, Italy, and Sicily, and the cardoons in Crete; but, in my opinion, the information respecting the latter has been taken only from the above-quoted passage of Bellon, which is improperly supposed to allude to the artichoke. As far as I know, it was not found upon that island either by Tournefort or any other traveller. Garidel, however, mentions the artichoke under the name given it by Bauhin, _cinara sylvestris latifolia_, among the plants growing wild in Provence; but later authors assure us that they sought for it there in vain[637]. I shall here remark that the artichoke is certainly known in Persia; but Tavernier says expressly that it was carried thither, like asparagus, and other European vegetables of the kitchen-garden, by the Carmelite and other monks; and that it was only in later times that it became common[638].

FOOTNOTES

[596] See Stapel, über die Pflanzen des Theophrast. p. 618. Salmasius ad Solinum, p. 159. Casauboni Animadv. in Athen. Lugd. 1621, fol. p. 146. Bauhini Hist. Plant. iii. p. 48.

[597] Colum. lib. x. ver. 235.

[598] Lud. Nonnii Diæteticon. Antv. 1646, 4to, p. 56.

[599] It was said, that if the corners of the seeds were bruised, no prickles would be produced. See Geopon. lib. xii. cap. 39. [It is a well-known physiological fact in botany, that many plants which are naturally spinous, when cultivated in gardens or rich soil, become unarmed. The production of spines seems to arise from an imperfect development of the growing point of a plant; when this development is increased by the greater supply of nutriment, the spines disappear, their places being supplied by a branch having leaves. We have instances of this in the apple, pear, &c., which are naturally spinous.]

[600] Geopon. _l. c._ Columella, xi. cap. 3.

[601] Geopon. 925, where repeated watering is directed; it is said you will then have tenderer fruit, and in more abundance.

[602] Virgil. Geor. i. 150. Plin. xviii. cap. 17.

[603] Palladius, iv. 9, p. 934, and lib. xi. Octob. p. 987. In the first-mentioned place he gives the same direction for preventing prickles, as that quoted respecting the _cinara_.

[604] Pliny, lib. xx. says, “The wind easily carries away the withered flowers on account of their woolly nature.”

[605] Κύναρος ἄκανθα πάντα πληθύει γύην.--Sophocles, in Phœnice.

... Segnisque horreret in arvis
Carduus...--Virgil. Georg. i. 50.

[606] Athen. Deipnos. at the end of the second book, p. 70. Salmasius, in his Remarks on Solinus, p. 159, is of opinion that Athenæus wrote κάρδον, not κάρδυον; and the Latins not _carduus_, but _cardus_.

[607] Lib. iii. cap. 19.

[608] Lib. xix. cap. 8.

[609] _Arctium Lappa_, an indigenous weed, difficult to be rooted out. Elsholz, in his Gartenbau, speaking of the Spanish cardoons, says, “The strong stem of the large burr, _Arctium Lappa_, may be dressed in the same manner, and is not much different in taste.” See also Thomas Moufet’s Health’s Improvement. Lond. 1746, 8vo, p. 217.

[610] Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16.

[611] Theophrastus: “Conceptus non spinosus, sed oblongus.” But Dioscorides says, “Capitulum spinosum.” This contradiction, and other small variations, have induced some to consider the _scolymus_ of Theophrastus and that of Dioscorides as two different plants.

[612] Dioscor. iii. 16.

[613] Dioscor. lib. iii. cap. 10, where he says of a plant that its leaves were like those of the _Scolymus_, and its stem like that of the _Cinara_.

[614] Rariorum Plantarum Historiæ, lib. iv. p. 153.

[615] “In Crete there is a kind of prickly plant, which in the common Greek idiom is generally called _ascolimbros_. The ancient Latins called it also by a Greek name, _glycyrrhizon_, though different from _glycyrrhiza_ (liquorice). It grows everywhere spontaneously, has a yellow flower, and abounds with a milky juice. The roots and leaves are usually eaten before it shoots up into a stem. We saw it exposed for sale with other herbs in the market-place of Ravenna, and at Ancona, where the women who were digging it up, gave it the name of _riuci_. We saw it gathered also in the Campagna di Roma, where the inhabitants called it _spinaborda_. This is the plant which by the modern Greeks is named _ascolimbros_.”--Bellonii Observationes, lib. i. cap. 18. “In Crete it is called _ascolymbros_, and in Lemnos _scombrouolo_, that is _scombri carduus_. This thistle abounds with a milky juice, like succory, has a yellow flower, and is excellent eating; so that I know no root cultivated in gardens which can be compared to it in taste, the parsnip not even excepted.”

[616] Theophrast. Hist. Plant. p. 620. The figure which Stapel gives, p. 621, is not of the _Scolymus hispanicus_, but of _Scolymus maculatus_. It is taken from Clusius, who has also a figure of the former.

[617] “I considered the heads of these poor Greeks as so many living inscriptions, which preserve to us the names mentioned by Dioscorides and Theophrastus. Though liable to different variations, they will, doubtless, be more lasting than the hardest marble, because they are every day renewed, whereas marble is effaced or destroyed. Inscriptions of this kind will preserve, therefore, to future ages the names of several plants known to those skilful Greeks who lived in happier and more learned times.”--Voyage du Levant, i. p. 34. Compare with the above what Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 28.

[618] Plin. lib. xxi. cap. 16. See Theophrast. lib. vi. cap. 4. Theoocritus, Idyll. x. 4, mentions a lamb wounded in the foot by a _cactus_. Tertullian names this plant among prickly weeds, together with the _rubus_, in the end of the second chapter of that unintelligible book De Pallio. De la Cerda, in his excellent edition of Opera Tertulliani, Lutetiæ Paris. 1624, 2 vols. fol. i. p. 13, reads _carecto_ instead of _cacto_; but Salmasius, in his edition of that work, p. 172, has sufficiently vindicated the latter.

[619] Dioscorid. Alexipharm. cap. 33.

[620] Theoph. p. 613.

[621] The creeping branches were in particular called _cacti_, the upright stem _pternix_.

[622] Theophrastus calls the bottom of the calyx περικάρπιον, a word which is still retained in botany. But he also says that the same part of the _cactus_ was called also σκαλία; from which is derived the _ascalia_ of Pliny. Galen calls it σπόνδυλον.

[623] Theoph. This term is explained by Pliny, lib. xiii. c. 4:--“Dulcis medulla palmarum in cacumine, quod cerebrum appellant.”

[624] Athen. Deipnos. at the end of the second book, p. 70. He gives everything to be found in Theophrastus; but either the author or some of his transcribers have so confused what he says, that it is almost unintelligible.

[625] Herm. Barbar. ad Dioscor. iii. 15.

[626] Manni de Florentinis inventis commentarium, p. 34.

[627] Politiani Opera. Lugd. 1533, 8vo, p. 444.

[628] Ruellius De Natura Stirpium. Bas. 1543, fol. p. 485.

[629] Hakluyt, vol. ii. p. 164. Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. p. 2462; and Anderson’s History of Commerce.

[630] Herm. Barbarus, in his Observations on Dioscorides.

[631] Salmas. ad Solin. p. 160.

[632] It is remarked in Golius’s Dictionary, p. 597, that this word signifies also the scales of a fish, and the strong scales of the calyx of the plant may have given rise to the name.

[633] The Greek word is αρτυτική.

[634] Glossarium Suiogothicum, i. p. 411.

[635] Potatoes.

[636] A variety of derivations may be found in Menage’s Dictionnaire Etymologique.

[637] See Rozier, Cours Complet d’Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 14.

[638] See his Travels. Geneva, 1681, fol. p. 164.

SAW-MILLS.

In early periods, the trunks of trees were split with wedges into as many and as thin pieces as possible[639]; and if it was necessary to have them still thinner, they were hewn on both sides to the proper size. This simple and wasteful manner of making boards has been still continued to the present time. Peter the Great of Russia endeavoured to put a stop to it by forbidding hewn deals to be transported on the river Neva. The saw, however, though so convenient and beneficial, has not been able to banish entirely the practice of splitting timber used in building, or in making furniture and utensils, for I do not speak here of fire-wood; and, indeed, it must be allowed that this method is attended with peculiar advantages, which that of sawing can never possess. The wood-splitters perform their work more expeditiously than sawyers, and split timber is much stronger than that which has been sawn; for the fissure follows the grain of the wood, and leaves it whole; whereas the saw, which proceeds in the line chalked out for it, divides the fibres, and by these means lessens its cohesion and solidity. Split timber, indeed, turns out often crooked and warped; but in many purposes to which it is applied this is not prejudicial; and such faults may sometimes be amended. As the fibres, however, retain their natural length and direction, thin boards, particularly, can be bent much better. This is a great advantage in making pipe-staves, or sieve-frames, which require still more art, and in forming various implements of the like kind.

Our common saw, which needs only to be guided by the hand of the workman, however simple it may be, was not known to the inhabitants of America when they were subdued by the Europeans[640]. The inventor of this instrument has by the Greeks been inserted in their mythology, with a place in which, among their gods, they honoured the greatest benefactors of the earliest ages. By some he is called Talus, and by others Perdix. Pliny[641] alone ascribes the invention to Dædalus; but Hardouin, in the passage where he does so, chooses to read Talus rather than Dædalus. In my opinion, Pliny may have committed an error as well as any of the moderns; and as one writer at present misleads another, Seneca[642], who gives the same inventor, may have fallen into a mistake by copying Pliny. Diodorus Siculus[643], Apollodorus[644], and others name the inventor Talus. He was the son of Dædalus’s sister; and was by his mother placed under the tuition of her brother, to be instructed in his art. Having once found the jaw-bone of a snake, he employed it to cut through a small piece of wood; and by these means was induced to form a like instrument of iron, that is, to make a saw. This invention, which greatly facilitates labour, excited the envy of his master, and instigated him to put Talus to death privately. We are told, that being asked by some one, when he was burying the body, what he was depositing in the earth, he replied, a serpent. This suspicious answer discovered the murder; and thus, adds the historian, a snake was the cause of the invention, of the murder, and of its being found out[645].

Hyginus[646], Servius[647], Fulgentius[648], Lactantius Placidus[649], Isidorus[650], and others call the inventor Perdix. That he was the son of a sister of Dædalus they all agree; but they differ respecting the name of his parents. The mother, by Fulgentius, is called Polycastes, but without any proof; and Lactantius gives to the father the name of Calaus. In Apollodorus, however, the mother of Talus is called Perdix; and the same name is given by Tzetzes to the mother of the inventor, whose name Talus he changes into Attalus[651]. Perdix, we are told, did not employ for a saw the jaw-bone of a snake, like Talus, but the back-bone of a fish; and this is confirmed by Ovid[652], who nevertheless is silent respecting the name of the inventor.

What may be meant by _spina piscis_ it is perhaps difficult to conjecture; but I can by no means make _spina dorsi_ of it, as Dion. Salvagnius has done, in his observations on the passage quoted from Ovid’s Ibis. The small bony processes which project from the spine of a fish have some similitude to a saw; but it would be hardly possible to saw through with them small pieces of wood. These bones are too long, as well as too far distant from each other; and the joints of the back-bone are liable to be dislocated by the smallest force. I am not acquainted with the spine of any fish which would be sufficiently strong for that purpose. The jaw-bone of a fish furnished with teeth would be more proper; but the words _spina in medio pisce_ prevent us from adopting that alteration. I should be inclined rather to explain this difficulty by the bone which projects from the snout of the saw-fish, called by the Romans _serra_, and by the Greeks _pristis_. That bone, indeed, might not be altogether unfit for such a use: the teeth are strongly united to the broad bone in the middle, and are capable of resisting a great force; but they are placed at rather too great a distance. The old inhabitants of Madeira, however, we are told, really used this bone instead of a saw[653]. That Talus found the jaw-bone of a snake with teeth like a saw is extremely probable, for there are many snakes which have teeth of that kind.

The saws of the Grecian carpenters had the same form, and were made in the like ingenious manner as ours are at present. This is fully shown by a painting still preserved among the antiquities of Herculaneum[654]. Two genii are represented at the end of a bench, which consists of a long table that rests upon two four-footed stools. The piece of wood which is to be sawn through is secured by cramps. The saw with which the genii are at work has a perfect resemblance to our frame-saw. It consists of a square frame, having in the middle a blade, the teeth of which stand perpendicular to the plane of the frame. The piece of wood which is to be sawn extends beyond the end of the bench, and one of the workmen appears standing and the other sitting on the ground. The arms, in which the blade is fastened, have the same form as that given to them at present. In the bench are seen holes, in which the cramps that hold the timber are stuck. They are shaped like the figure seven; and the ends of them reach below the boards that form the top of it. The French call a cramp of this kind _un valet_[655].

Montfaucon[656] also has given the representation of two ancient saws taken from Gruter. One of them seems to be only the blade of a saw without any frame; but the other figure I consider as a cross-cut saw; and I think I can distinguish all the parts, though it is imperfectly delineated. One may however perceive both the handles between which the blade is fastened; the wooden bar that binds them together, though the blade is delineated too near it; and about the middle of this bar, the piece of wood that tightens the cord which keeps the handles as well as the whole instrument firm. Saws which were not placed in a frame, but fastened to a handle, are thus described by Palladius[657]:--“Serrulæ manubriatæ minores majoresque ad mensuram cubiti, quibus facile est, quod per serram fieri non potest, resecando trunco arboris, aut vitis interseri.”

The most beneficial and ingenious improvement of this instrument was, without doubt, the invention of saw-mills, which are driven either by water, wind, [or by steam]. Mills of the first kind were erected so early as the fourth century, in Germany, on the small river Roer or Ruer[658]; for though Ausonius speaks properly of water-mills for cutting stone, and not timber, it cannot be doubted that these were invented later than mills for manufacturing deals, or that both kinds were erected at the same time. The art however of cutting marble with a saw is very old. Pliny[659] conjectures that it was invented in Caria; at least he knew no building incrusted with marble of greater antiquity than the palace of king Mausolus, at Halicarnassus. This edifice is celebrated by Vitruvius[660], for the beauty of its marble; and Pliny gives an account of the different kinds of sand used for cutting it; for it is the sand properly, says he, and not the saw, which produces that effect. The latter presses down the former, and rubs it against the marble; and the coarser the sand is, the longer will be the time required to polish the marble which has been cut by it. Stones of the soap-rock kind, which are indeed softer than marble, and which would require less force than wood, were sawn at that period[661]: but it appears that the far harder glassy kinds of stone were sawn then also; for we are told of the discovery of a building which was encrusted with cut agate, cornelian, lapis lazuli, and amethysts[662]. I have, however, found no account in any of the Greek or Roman writers of a mill for sawing wood; and as the writers of modern times speak of saw-mills as new and uncommon, it would seem that the oldest construction of them has been forgotten, or that some important improvement has made them appear entirely new.

Becher says, with his usual confidence, that saw-mills were invented in the seventeenth century[663]. Though this is certainly false, I did not expect to find that there were saw-mills in the neighbourhood of Augsburg so early as the year 1337, as Stetten[664] has discovered by the town-books of that place. I shall here insert his own words, in answer to a request I made that he would be so kind as to communicate to me all the information he knew on that subject:--“You are desirous of reading that passage in our town-books, where saw-mills are first mentioned; but it is of very little importance. There is to be found only under the year 1338 the name of a burgher called Giss Saegemuller; and though it may be objected that one cannot from the name infer the existence of the employment, I am of a different opinion; especially as I have lately been able to obtain a proof much more to be depended on. In the surveyors’ book, which I have often before quoted, and which, perhaps, for many centuries has not been seen or consulted by any one, I find under the year 1322, and several times afterwards, sums disbursed under the following title: Molitori dicto Hanrey pro asseribus et swaertlingis. Schwartlings, among us, are the outside deals of the trunk, which in other places are called _Schwarten_. This word, therefore, makes the existence of a saw-mill pretty certain. As a confirmation of this idea, we have still a mill of that kind which is at present called the Hanrey-mill; and the stream which supplies it with water is called the Hanrey-brook. Since the earliest ages, the ground on which this mill, and the colour, stamping, and oil-mills in the neighbourhood are built, was the property of the hospital of the Holy Ghost. By that hospital it was given as a life-rent to a rich burgher named Erlinger, but returned again in 1417 by his daughter Anna Bittingerin, who had, above and under the Hanrey-mill, two other saw-mills, which still exist, and for which, in virtue of an order of council of that year, she entered into a contract with the hospital in regard to the water and mill-dams.” There were saw-mills, therefore, at Augsburg so early as 1322. This appears to be highly probable also from the circumstance, that such mills occur very often in the following century in many other countries.

When the Infant Henry sent settlers to the island of Madeira, which was discovered in 1420, and caused European fruits of every kind to be carried thither, he ordered saw-mills to be erected also, for the purpose of sawing into deals the various species of excellent timber with which the island abounded, and which were afterwards transported to Portugal[665]. About the year 1427 the city of Breslau had a saw-mill which produced a yearly rent of three marks; and in 1490 the magistrates of Erfurt purchased a forest, in which they caused a saw-mill to be erected, and they rented another mill in the neighbourhood besides. Norway, which is covered with forests, had the first saw-mill about the year 1530. This mode of manufacturing timber was called the new art; and because the exportation of deals was by these means increased, that circumstance gave occasion to the deal-tythe, introduced by Christian III. in the year 1545[666]. Soon after the celebrated Henry Ranzau caused the first mill of this kind to be built in Holstein[667]. In 1552 there was a saw-mill at Joachimsthal, which, as we are told, belonged to Jacob Geusen, mathematician. In the year 1555 the bishop of Ely, ambassador from Mary queen of England to the court of Rome, having seen a saw-mill in the neighbourhood of Lyons, the writer of his travels thought it worthy of a particular description[668]. In the sixteenth century, however, there were mills with different saw-blades, by which a plank could be cut into several deals at the same time. Pighius saw one of these, in 1575, on the Danube, near Ratisbon, when he accompanied Charles, prince of Juliers and Cleves, on his travels[669]. It may here be asked whether the Dutch had such mills first, as is commonly believed[670]. The first saw-mill was erected in Holland at Saardam, in the year 1596; and the invention of it is ascribed to Cornelis Cornelissen[671]; but he is as little the inventor as the mathematician of Joachimsthal. Perhaps he was the first person who built a saw-mill at that place, which is a village of great trade, and has still a great many saw-mills, though the number of them is becoming daily less; for within the last thirty years a hundred have been given up[672]. The first mill of this kind in Sweden was erected in the year 1653[673]. At present, that kingdom possesses the largest perhaps ever constructed in Europe, where a water-wheel, twelve feet broad, drives at the same time seventy-two saws.

In England saw-mills had at first the same fate that printing had in Turkey, the ribbon-loom in the dominions of the Church, and the crane at Strasburgh. When attempts were made to introduce them they were violently opposed, because it was apprehended that the sawyers would be deprived by them of their means of getting a subsistence. For this reason it was found necessary to abandon a saw-mill erected by a Dutchman near London[674], in 1663; and in the year 1700, when one Houghton laid before the nation the advantages of such a mill, he expressed his apprehension that it might excite the rage of the populace[675]. What he dreaded was actually the case in 1767 or 1768, when an opulent timber-merchant, by the desire and approbation of the Society of Arts, caused a saw-mill, driven by wind, to be erected at Limehouse under the direction of James Stansfield, who had learned, in Holland and Norway, the art of constructing and managing machines of that kind. A mob assembled and pulled the mill to pieces; but the damage was made good by the nation, and some of the rioters were punished. A new mill was afterwards erected, which was suffered to work without molestation, and which gave occasion to the erection of others[676]. It appears, however, that this was not the only mill of the kind then in Britain; for one driven also by wind had been built at Leith, in Scotland, some years before[677].

[The application of the steam-engine has in modern times almost entirely displaced the use of either water or wind as sources of power in machinery, and most of the saw-mills now in action, especially those on a large scale, are worked by steam. Some idea of the precision with which their operations are now accomplished may be obtained from the following fact. At the City of London saw-mills, the largest log of wood which had been placed on the carriage in one piece--a log of Honduras mahogany 18 feet long and three feet one inch square,--was cut into unbroken sheets at the rate of ten to an inch, and so beautifully smooth as to require scarcely any dressing.]

FOOTNOTES

[639] Virgil. Georg. lib. i. v. 144. Pontoppidan says, “Before the middle of the sixteenth century all trunks were hewn and split with the axe into two planks; whereas at present they would give seven or eight boards. This is still done in some places where there are no saw-mills in the neighbourhood; especially at Sudenoer and Amte Nordland, where a great many boats and sloops are built of such hewn boards, which are twice as strong as those sawn; but they consume too many trunks.” See Natürliche Historie von Norwegen. Copenhagen, 1753, 2 vols. 8vo, i. p. 244.

[640] De Garcilasso de la Vega, Histoire des Incas.

[641] Lib. vii. 1. cap. 56.

[642] Epist. 90.

[643] Diodor. Sicul. iv. cap. 78.

[644] Apollodori Bibl. lib. iii. cap. 16.

[645] Those who are desirous of seeing the whole account may consult Diodorus, or Banier’s Mythology, [or Keightley’s Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy, p. 398, Lond. 1838.]

[646] Hygin. Fab. 39, 244, 274.

[647] Ad Georg. i. 143.

[648] Mythographi, ed. Van Staveren, lib. iii. 2, p. 708.

[649] In Mythogr. et in Ovid. Burm. lib. viii. fab. 3.

[650] Orig. lib. xix. cap. 19.

[651] Chiliad. i. 493.

[652] Metamorph. lib. viii. 244. The following line from the Ibis, ver. 500, alludes to the same circumstance:

“Ut cui causa necis serra reperta fuit.”

[653] See Cadomosto’s Voyage to Africa, in Novi Orbis Navigat. cap. 6. This account is not so ridiculous as that of Olaus Magnus, who says that the saw-fish can with his snout bore through a ship. [There are however many well-authenticated instances of the planks of ships being perforated by the upper jaw of this powerful animal, which it has been supposed occasionally attacks the hulls of vessels in mistake for the whale.]

[654] Le Pitture antiche d’Ercolano, vol. i. tav. 34.

[655] That cramps or hold-fasts are still formed in the same manner as those seen in the ancient painting found at Herculaneum, particularly when fine inlaid works are made, is proved by the figure in Roubo, l’Art du Menuisier, tab. xi. fig. 4, and xii. fig. 15.

[656] L’Antiquité Expliquée, vol. iii. pl. 189.

[657] Pallad. De Re Rust. lib. i. tit. 43.--Cicero, in his oration for Cluentius, chap. lxiv., speaks of an ingenious saw, with which a thief sawed out the bottom of a chest.

[658] Ausonii Mosella, v. 361.

[659] Plin. lib. xxxvi. cap. 6.

[660] Vitruv. lib. ii. cap. 8.

[661] Plin. lib. xxxvi. cap. 22.

[662] See Jannon de S. Laurent’s treatise on the cut stones of the ancients, in Saggi di Dissertazioni nella Acad. Etrusca di Cortona, tom. vi. p. 56.

[663] “Saw-mills are useful machines, first introduced in this century; and I do not know any one who can properly be called the real inventor.”--Närrische Weisheit. Frankf. 1683, 12mo, p. 78.

[664] In that excellent work, Kunst-und-handwerks Geschichte der Stadt Augsburg, 1779, 8vo, p. 141.

[665] This we are told by Abraham Peritsol, the Jew, in Itinera Mundi, printed with the learned annotations of Thomas Hyde, in Ugolini Thesaur. Antiq. Sacr. vol. vii. p. 103. Peritsol wrote before the year 1547.

[666] Nic. Cragii Historia regis Christiani III. Hafniæ 1737, fol. p. 293. See also Pontoppidan’s History of Norway.

[667] Allgemeine Welthistorie, xxxiii. p. 227.

[668] The account of this journey may be found in Hardwicke’s Miscellaneous State Papers, from 1501 to 1726, i. p. 71:--“The saw-mill is driven with an upright wheel; and the water that maketh it go, is gathered whole into a narrow trough, which delivereth the same water to the wheels. This wheel hath a piece of timber put to the axle-tree end, like the handle of a broch, and fastened to the end of the saw, which being turned with the force of the water, hoisteth up and down the saw, that it continually eateth in, and the handle of the same is kept in a rigall of wood from swerving. Also the timber lieth as it were upon a ladder, which is brought by little and little to the saw with another vice.”

[669] Hercules Prodicus. Coloniæ 1609, 8vo, p. 95.

[670] Leupoldi Theatrum Machinarum Molarium. Leipzig, 1735, fol. p. 114. I shall here take occasion to remark, that in the sixteenth century there were boring-mills driven by water. Felix Fabri, in his Historia Suevorum, p. 81, says that there were such mills at Ulm.

[671] De Koophandel van Amsterdam. Amst. 1727, ii. p. 583.

[672] La Richesse de la Hollande. Lond. 1778, 4to, i. p. 259.

[673] Clason, Sweriges Handel Omskiften 1751.

[674] Anderson’s History of Commerce.

[675] Houghton’s Husbandry and Trade Improved, Lond. 1727, iii. p. 47.

[676] Memoirs of Agriculture and other Œconomical Arts, by Robert Dossie. Lond. 1768, 8vo, i. p. 123. Of Stansfield’s mill, on which he made some improvements, a description and figure may be seen in Bailey’s Advancement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. Lond. 1772, i. p. 231.

[677] Anderson _ut supra_.

STAMPED PAPER.

Paper stamped with a certain mark by Government, and which in many countries must be used for all judicial acts, public deeds, and private contracts, in order to give them validity, is one of those numerous modes of taxation invented after the other means of raising money for the service of states, or rather of their rulers, became exhausted. It is not of great antiquity; for before the invention of our paper it would not have been a very productive source of finance. When parchment and other substances employed for writing on were dear, when greater simplicity of manners produced more honesty and more confidence among mankind, and when tallies supplied the place of notes, bonds, and receipts, writings of that kind were very little in use.

De Basville, however, in his Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Languedoc, affirms that stamped paper was introduced so early as the year 537, by the emperor Justinian. This book, written by the author, intendant of that province in 1697, for the use of the duke of Burgundy, was printed, in octavo, at Marseilles in 1734, and not at Amsterdam, as announced in the title; but it was carefully suppressed by the Government, and on that account is very scarce even in France[678]. I have never seen it; but I know the author’s ideas respecting stamped paper, from an extract in Variétés Historiques, Physiques, et Littéraires, printed at Paris in the year 1752[679]. The author of this work supports the opinion of his countryman: but it is undoubtedly false; for the law quoted as a proof requires only that documents should be written on such paper as had marked at the top (which was called the protocoll) the name of the intendant of the finances, and the time when the paper was made; and this regulation was established merely with a view to prevent the forging and altering of acts or deeds[680]. A kind of stamped paper therefore was brought into use, though different from what we have at present, the principal intention of which is not to render writings more secure, but by imposing a certain duty on the stamps, proportioned to the importance of the purpose it is employed for, to make a considerable addition to the public revenue[681]. The stamps serve as a receipt to show that the tax has been paid; and, though many law papers must be stamped, that burthen has tended as little to prevent law-suits as the stamping of cards has to lessen gaming: though some think differently. In both too much is risked and too much expected for taxes to deter mankind from engaging in either.

If in this historical research we look only to the antiquity of stamping, we shall find that both the Greeks and the Romans had soldiers marked in that manner; and, if we may be allowed to bring together things so different, we might include under the like head those runaway slaves who were marked by being branded; but I allude here only to the stamped paper now in use, which was certainly invented in Holland, a country where every necessary of life is subjected to taxation. The States of the United Provinces having promised a reward to any one who should invent a new impost, that might at the same time bear light on the people and be productive to the government, some person proposed that of _bezegelde brieven_, or stamped paper, which was approved; and which Boxhorn, to whom we are indebted for this information, considers as a very proper tax. He is of opinion also that it might with great advantage be adopted in other countries[682]; and this was really the case soon after his death, which happened in 1653.

Stamped paper was introduced in Holland on the 13th of August, 1624, by an ordinance which represented the necessity and great benefit of this new tax. Among other things advanced in its favour, it was said that it would tend to lessen law-suits, and, on that account, would soon recommend itself to neighbouring nations. What we are told therefore by the author of an extract in Variétés Historiques, before-quoted, that stamped paper began to be used in Holland and Spain so early as the year 1555, is certainly false. The Spaniards may, indeed, have been the first people who followed the example of the Dutch; for the author above mentioned asserts, that he saw an act, executed by a notary at Brussels, in 1668, which was written on stamped paper.

This tax was introduced in the electorate of Saxony by an ordinance of the 22nd of March 1682; and into that of Brandenburg on the 15th of July, in the same year. Bartholdus however says, but without producing any proof[683], that stamped paper was used before that period in Denmark, Florence, and Silesia. In Hanover it was first introduced, as I think, on the 20th of February, 1709.

[The stamp-tax was first introduced into this country in the reign of William and Mary, in 1693 (5 W. & M. c. 21). This act imposes stamps upon grants from the crown, diplomas, contracts, probates of wills and letters of administration, and upon all writs, proceedings, and records in courts of law and equity; it does not however seem to impose stamps upon deeds, unless these are enrolled at Westminster or other courts of record. Two years afterwards, conveyances, deeds and leases, were subjected to the stamp duty, and by a series of acts in the succeeding reigns, every instrument recording a transaction between two individuals was subjected to a stamp duty before it could be used in a court of justice. These laws have been variously altered in later times, but it is beyond our province to trace them further.]

FOOTNOTES

[678] An account of this book may be found in Anecdotes secr. sur divers sujets de littérat. 1734, p. 573, and in the preface to Etat de la France, de M. de Boulainvilliers, fol. p. 12.

[679] Inserted in the Encyclopédie, vol. xi. p. 862.

[680] Novell. coll. iv. tit. 23. cap. 2. nov. 44.

[681] Such is the idea of Stryk in Continuat. altera usus moderni pandectarum, lib. xxii. tit. 4. p. 856.

[682] “The States of Holland having laid sufficiently heavy duties on merchandise of every kind, and these not being equal to the expenditure, which was daily increasing, began to think of imposing new ones. For that purpose they issued an edict, inviting the ingenious to turn their thoughts towards that subject, and offering a very ample reward to whoever should invent a new tax, that might be as little burdensome as possible, and yet productive to the republic. Some shrewd, deep-thinking person, at length devised one on stamped paper (called _de impost van bezegelde brieven_), to be paid for all paper impressed with the seal of the States. The inventor proposed, that it should be enacted by public authority, that no petitions from the states, or from the magistrates of any city or district, or any public bodies, should be received; that no documents should be admitted in courts of justice; that no receipts should be legal, and that no acts signed by notaries, secretaries, or other persons in office, and, in short, no contracts should be valid, except such as were written upon paper to which the seal of the States had been affixed, in the manner above-mentioned. It was proposed, also, that this paper should be sold by the clerks of the different towns and courts at the following rate; paper impressed with the great seal of the States for sixpence, and that with the less seal for twopence per sheet: for according to the importance of the business it was necessary that the great or less seal should be used. The States approved this plan, and it was immediately put in execution.”--Boxhornii Disquisitiones Politic. casus 59. In this collection there is also Boxhornii Reip. Bataviæ Brevis et Accurata Descriptio, in the eighth chapter of which the author gives the following account of the origin of stamped paper:--“A very ingenious method has lately been invented of raising large sums of money for the use of the republic. As there are many rich people who have entrusted a considerable share of their property to the public treasury, the interest of which they receive annually on giving receipts; as many law-suits are carried on which are generally entered into by the wealthy, and which cannot be brought to a conclusion until a variety of instruments, as they are called, have been executed on each side; and as, on account of the flourishing state of trade, many contracts are made, which, for the sake of security, must be mutually signed, the States thought proper to enact by a public edict, that no receipts, law-papers, contracts, or instruments of the like kind, should be legal or valid, unless written on paper impressed with the great or small seal of the States. A price was also fixed on the paper, to be paid by those who had occasion for it; so that a sheet which before could be purchased for a half-penny, was raised to several pence; and it is incredible how great a revenue these sheets bring to the public, by so many of them being used. The poor, however, and those of small fortune, feel little of this burden, as the rich principally are concerned in the transactions above-mentioned.”

[683] Fr. Jac. Bartholdi Diss. de Charta Signata; resp. P. Kolhart, Franc. 1690, cap. 2, § 16, p. 36.

INSURANCE.

Insurance, that excellent establishment by which losses that would entirely ruin a merchant, being divided among a company, are rendered supportable, and almost imperceptible; by which undertakings too great for one person are easily accomplished, and by which commodities brought from the most distant regions are made cheaper[684], appears not to have been known to the Romans, however near they may have come to the invention of it. If we examine closely the information from which some endeavour to prove the contrary, it will be found that it is far from sufficient to support their opinion.

Puffendorf[685], Barbeyrac[686], Loccenius[687], Kulpis[688], and others, ground their assertions on a passage of Livy[689], who says, that when the Roman army in Spain was distressed for provisions, clothing and other necessaries, a company engaged to convey to them everything they stood in need of, under the stipulation that the State should make good their loss, in case their vessels should be shipwrecked by storms, or be taken by the enemy; and we are told that these terms were agreed to. This was undoubtedly a promise of indemnification, but by no means an insurance, in which it is always necessary that a premium should be given. On occasions of this kind, however, acts of fraud were practised, like those committed at present, to the prejudice of insurers. Shipwrecks were pretended to have happened which never took place; and old shattered vessels, freighted with articles of little value, were purposely sunk, and the crew saved in boats; and large sums were then demanded as a reimbursement for the loss[690].

Little more is proved by a passage of Suetonius[691], which Kulpis and others consider as affording an instance of insurance. That author tells us, that the emperor Claudius promised to indemnify merchants for their losses, if their ships should perish by storms at sea. This passage Anderson must not have read; else he would not have said that Suetonius ascribed the invention of insurance to Claudius.

In Simon’s edition of Grotius, a passage is quoted from Cicero’s epistles[692] as an instance of insurance among the Romans, which seems to be more probable. Cicero says he hopes to find at Laodicea security, by means of which he can remit the money of the republic, without being exposed to any danger on its passage. The word _prædes_ may here signify insurers; but, in my opinion, this quotation ought rather to be classed among those which have been collected by Ayrer, as the first traces of bills of exchange[693].

Those remains of the ancient laws which, according to Kulpis and others, allude to insurance, concern bottomry (_fœnus nauticum_) only; and that this is much older than insurance has been already fully proved by Stypman[694].

Malynes[695], Anderson, and others affirm, that insurance is mentioned in the marine laws of the Isle of Oleron. This island, which lies opposite to the mouth of the Charente, on the coast of France, was much celebrated in the eleventh, twelfth, and following centuries on account of its trade. It belonged then to the duke of Aquitaine, and came to the crown of England by the marriage of Eleonora, daughter of the last duke, with Henry II. Under Eleonora were framed in the island those laws so well-known by the names _Roole d’Oleron_, _Roole des Jugemens d’Oleron_, that, like the laws of the Rhodians, they were used also by foreigners. These laws were afterwards enlarged and improved by Richard I., Eleonora’s son; at least we are assured so by the French historians: but the English ascribe them to Richard alone. In order to determine the period when they were framed, I shall only observe that Eleonora died in the year 1202, and Richard in 1199; and Anderson, therefore, not without probability, places the origin of them in the year 1194. A copy of these laws, printed at Rouen, is still preserved, in which it is said that they were first drawn up in 1266. This, however, the French and the English declare to be false[696]. They are written in French, that is, in the old Gascon dialect. I am acquainted with them from the following scarce book, the author of which, in the preface, calls himself Cleirac: Us et Coutumes de la Mer[697]; but I find no traces in them of insurance. Even Cleirac himself, who has given an excellent explanation of the laws of Oleron, seems not to have found any; for where he relates everything he knew respecting the history of it, he ascribes this invention, and also that of bills of exchange, to the Jews, who made use of it when they were expelled from France. According to Cleirac, insurance was long detested by the Christians, who at that time considered it as a sin to take interest; and the use of it, as well as of bills of exchange, was first made common by the Guelphs and Ghibelines. Of this pretended service of the Jews in regard to insurance, I know no proof.

The celebrated maritime laws of the city of Wisby, in the island of Gothland, whether of later date, as the French assert, or older, which is more probable, than those of Oleron, are equally silent with respect to insurance. These laws were not written originally in Swedish, as l’Estocq[698] says, but in the Low-German. The translation into High-German by Marquard[699] is incorrect, and the French one of Cleirac is too free and too much abridged. The Dutch translation published at Amsterdam is the completest[700].

Insurance was, undoubtedly, not known at the time when the later Hanseatic maritime laws were framed, else it would have been mentioned in them. Of these laws there are various editions. One of those most used is that by Kericke, which is inserted also in Heineccii Scriptorum de Jure Nautico et Maritimo Fasciculus. Cleirac has given a French translation of them.

As little respecting insurance is to be found in Il Consolato del Mare. These maritime laws, highly worthy of notice, were originally written in the Catalonian dialect; and it seems very probable that they were drawn up at Barcelona. A part of them appears to have been framed in the eleventh, but the greater part in the thirteenth century; for the book itself proves, in more than one place, that they are not all of the same antiquity. The most correct edition is that published at Leyden in 1704[701]. Those writers who have pretended that insurance is mentioned in these Catalonian maritime laws have, perhaps, been led into this error, because, in an appendix to some of the common editions, there is a short account of insurance as once practised at Barcelona. As I have never seen this small treatise, I do not know whether it contains anything respecting the history of it. The oldest laws and regulations concerning insurance, with which I am at present acquainted, are the following.

On the 28th of January 1523, five persons appointed for that purpose drew up at Florence some articles which are still employed on the exchange at Leghorn. These important regulations, together with the prescribed form of policies, which may be considered as the oldest[702], have been inserted, in Italian and German, by Magens, in his Treatise on Insurance, Average and Bottomry[703], published at Hamburgh in 1753. I should have been glad to have found in Italian authors some information respecting the antiquity of these regulations[704], a copy of which Magens says he procured from Leghorn; but I have hitherto sought for it in vain. Straccha however mentions a Florentine order of June the 15th, 1526, which forbids common insurance, unless the goods and commodities are specified[705].

There is still preserved a short regulation of the 25th May 1537, by the emperor Charles V., respecting bills of exchange and insurance, in which the strictly fulfilling only of an agreement of insurance is commanded.

In 1549 the same emperor issued an express order, “Op ’t faict van der zee-vaerdt,” in which occur some articles respecting insurance[706], and additions were afterwards made to it in 1561.

In the year 1556, Philip II., king of Spain, gave to the Spanish merchants certain regulations respecting insurance, which are inserted by Magens, with a German translation, in his work before mentioned. They contain some forms of policies on ships going to the Indies.

On the last of October 1563, Philip II. published his maritime laws, in which some forms of policies are given[707]; but on the last of March 1568 that prince forbade the practice of insurance, on account of the bad use to which it had been often applied. This prohibition I have not been able to find. I am acquainted with it only by an order of the 20th of January 1570, in which the king expressly recals it, because the merchants at Antwerp, both subjects and foreigners, had presented strong remonstrances against it[708].

In the year 1598, the Kamer von Assurantie, Chamber of Insurance, was established at Amsterdam. An account of the first regulations of this insurance-office may be seen in Pontanus’s History of the City of Amsterdam, and in other works[709].

In the year 1600, regulations respecting insurance were formed by the city of Middelburg in Zealand.