Kitabı oku: «A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)», sayfa 29

After the death of the emperor Rodolphus, his patent was in everything renewed, on the 29th of September, 1612, by the emperor Matthias, and extended to the term of fifteen years more. On the 16th of June, 1621, the Nuremberg patent expired; and the same year the family of Held, with consent of the magistrates of that city, entered into an agreement, in regard to wages and other regulations, with the master wire-drawers and piece-workers¹²⁷², which was confirmed in another patent granted to Held on the 28th of September, 1621, by the emperor Ferdinand II., agreeably to the tenor of the two patents before-mentioned, and which was still continued for fifteen years longer. On the 26th of September, 1622, this patent, by advice of the imperial council, and without any opposition, was converted into a fief to the heirs male of the family of Held¹²⁷³, renewable at the expiration of the term specified in the patent.

It appears that in the fifteenth century, there were flatting-mills in several other places as well as at Nuremberg. In the town-books of Augsburg there occurs, under the year 1351, the name of a person called Chunr. Tratmuller de Tratmul, who certainly seems to have been a wire-drawer. In 1545, Andrew Schulz brought to that city the art of wire-drawing gold and silver, which he had learned in Italy. Before this period that art was little known in Germany; and Von Stetten mentions an imperial police ordinance of the year 1548, in which gold fringes are reckoned among those wares for which large sums were at that time sent out of the empire. Schulz obtained a patent from the council, but his attempt proved unsuccessful. The business, however, was undertaken afterwards in Augsburg by others, and in particular by an opulent mercantile family named Hopfer, who bestowed great pains to establish it on a permanent footing. For this purpose they invited from Venice, Gabriel Marteningi and his son Vincent, who were excellent workmen and had great experience in the art. George Geyer, who learned under them, was the first person who introduced the flatting of wire at Augsburg; and he and his son endeavoured for a long time to monopolize the employment of wire-drawing, and to prevent other people from engaging in it near them. In the year 1698, M. P. Ulstatt, John George Geyer, Joseph Matti and Moriz Zech obtained a new patent, and out of gratitude for this favour they caused a medal to be struck, which deserves to be reckoned among the most beautiful works of Philip Henry Muller, the artist who cut the die.

In the year 1447 there was a flatting-mill at Breslau¹²⁷⁴; and another, together with a burnishing-mill was constructed at Zwickau¹²⁷⁵ in 1506. All the wire in England was manufactured by the hand till 1565, when the art of drawing it with mills was introduced by foreigners¹²⁷⁶. Before that period the English wire was bad; and the greater part of the iron-wire used in the kingdom, as well as the instruments employed by the wool-combers, was brought from other countries. According to some accounts, however, this art was carried to England at a much later period; for we are told that the first wire-making was established at Esher by Jacob Momma and Daniel Demetrius¹²⁷⁷. Anderson himself says that a Dutchman constructed at Sheen, near Richmond, in 1663, the first flatting-mill ever seen in England.

Iron-wire in France is called fil d’ Archal; and the artists there have an idea, which is not improbable, that this appellation took its rise from one Richard Archal, who either invented or first established the art of drawing iron-wire in that country. The expression fil de Richard is therefore used also among the French wire-drawers¹²⁷⁸. Of this Archal, however, we know as little as of the Nuremberg Rudolf; and Menage will not admit the above derivation. He is of opinion that fil d’Archal is compounded of the Latin words filum and aurichalcum¹²⁷⁹.

To conclude this article, I shall add a few observations respecting filigrane works and spangles. The first name signifies a kind of work of which one can scarcely form a proper idea from a description. Fine gold and silver wire, often curled or twisted in a serpentine form, and sometimes plaited, are worked through each other and soldered together so as to form festoons, flowers and various ornaments; and in many places also they are frequently melted together by the blowpipe into little balls, by which means the threads are so entwisted as to have a most beautiful and pleasant effect. This work was employed formerly much more than at present in making small articles, which served rather for show than for use; such as needle-cases, caskets to hold jewels, small boxes, particularly shrines, decorations for the images of saints and other church furniture. Work of this kind is called filagrame, filigrane, ouvrage de filigrane; and it may be readily perceived that these words are compounded of filum and granum. We are told in the Encyclopédie that the Latins called this work “opus filatim elaboratum,” but this is to be understood as alluding to the latest Latin writers; for filatim occurs only once in Lucretius, who applies it to woollen thread.

This art, however, is of great antiquity, and appears to have been brought to Europe from the East. Grignon informs us that he found some remains of such work in the ruins of the Roman city before-mentioned¹²⁸⁰. Among church furniture we meet with filigrane works of the middle ages. There was lately preserved in an abbey at Paris, a cross ornamented with filigrane work, which was made by St. Eloy, who died in 665; and the greater part of the works of that saint are decorated in the like manner¹²⁸¹. In the collection of relics at Hanover is still to be seen a cross embellished with this kind of work, which is said to be as old as the eleventh or twelfth century¹²⁸². The Turks, Armenians and Indians make at present master-pieces of this sort, and with tools exceedingly coarse and imperfect. Marsden extols the ingenuity of the Malays on the same account¹²⁸³; and articles of the like nature, manufactured at Deccan, are, we are told, remarkably pretty, and cost ten times the price of the metal employed in forming them¹²⁸⁴. This art is now neglected in Europe, and little esteemed. Augsburg, however, a few years ago had a female artist, Maria Euphros. Reinhard, celebrated for works of this kind, who died in 1779. In 1765 she ornamented with filigrane work some silver basons, which were sent to Russia for the use of the church, and which gained her great honour¹²⁸⁵.

Spangles, paillettes, are small, thin, round leaves of metal, pierced in the middle, which are sewed on as ornaments; and though they are well-known, it might be difficult for those who never saw them manufactured, or read an account of the manner in which they are prepared, to conceive how they are made. The wire is first twisted round a rod into the form of a screw; it is then cut into single spiral rings, like those used by pin-makers in forming heads to their pins; and these rings being placed upon a smooth anvil are flattened by a smart stroke of the hammer, so that a small hole remains in the middle, and the ends of the wire which lie over each other are closely united. I remember to have seen on old saddle-cloths and horse-furniture large plates of this kind; but the small spangles seem to be of later invention. According to Lejisugo¹²⁸⁶, whose real name I do not know, they were first made in the French gold and silver manufactories, and imitated in Germany, for the first time, in the beginning of the seventeenth century. The method of preparing them was long kept a secret.

BUCK-WHEAT

Grasses alone, and of these the seeds only of those which are so abundant in an eatable farinaceous substance that they deserve to be cultivated as food to man, are properly corn. Notwithstanding this definition, buck-wheat, which belongs to a kind of plants that grow wild in Europe, knot-grass, water-pepper, &c., because it is sown and employed like corn, is commonly reckoned to be corn also. Our wheat and oats, however, were not produced from indigenous grasses, as has been the opinion of some learned naturalists, who, nevertheless, were not botanists; nor has buck-wheat been produced from the above-mentioned wild plants¹²⁸⁷. Both these assertions can be proved by the strongest botanical evidence; and the latter is supported by historical testimony, which cannot be adduced in regard to the proper species of corn, as they were used before the commencement of our history.

Two centuries ago, when botanists studied the ancients, and believed that they had been acquainted with and given names to all plants, some of them maintained that buck-wheat was their ocimum: others have considered it as the erysimum of Theophrastus; and some as the panicum or sesamum. All these opinions, however, are certainly false. It is indeed difficult to determine what plant the ocimum of the ancients was; but it may be easily proved that it was not buck-wheat, as Bock or Tragus¹²⁸⁸ has confidently asserted. The ocimum, or a species of that name, for it seems to have been applied to several vegetable productions, was a sweet-smelling plant, called also, at least by later writers, basilicum; one kind of ocimum had a thick, woody root¹²⁸⁹, and others possessed a strong medicinal virtue¹²⁹⁰. The ancient writers on agriculture give it a place between the garden flowers and the odoriferous herbs¹²⁹¹; but none of these descriptions can be applied to our buck-wheat, which is both insipid and destitute of smell. Two unintelligible passages of an ancient writer on husbandry make ocimum to have been a plant used for fodder, or rather a kind of green fodder or meslin composed of various plants mixed together¹²⁹². The erysimum of Theophrastus produced seeds which had a very hot acrid taste¹²⁹³; and he doubts whether it was eaten by cattle¹²⁹⁴. Pliny says expressly that it ought to be classed rather among medicinal plants than those of the corn-kind¹²⁹⁵; though Theophrastus has mentioned it more than once among the latter.

It is not worth the trouble to enter into an examination of more opinions of the like kind, as several respectable writers, who lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century, consider buck-wheat to be a plant first introduced into Europe in their time, though they are not all agreed in determining its native country. John Bruyerinus, or as he was properly called, La Bruyère-Champier, physician to Francis I., king of France, who in the year 1530 wrote his book, often printed, De Re Cibaria¹²⁹⁶, says that buck-wheat had been first brought to Europe a little before that time from Greece and Asia. That well-known botanist Ruellius¹²⁹⁷, who wrote in 1536, and Conrade Heresbach¹²⁹⁸, who died in 1576, give the same account. The latter calls the northern part of Asia the original country of this plant, or that from which it had a little before been brought to Germany. A nobleman of Brittany, whose book, Les Contes d’Eutrapel¹²⁹⁹, was printed after his death in 1587, remarks occasionally, that at the time when he wrote, buck-wheat had been introduced into France about sixty years, and that it had become the common food of the poor. Martin Schook¹³⁰⁰ wrote in 1661, that buck-wheat had been known in Flanders scarcely a hundred years. The old botanists, Lobelius, the brothers Bauhin, Matthiolus, and others, all assert that this grain was new in Europe¹³⁰¹. I shall here remark, that Crescentio, who lived in the thirteenth century, and described all the then known species of corn, makes no mention of buck-wheat. It undoubtedly acquired this name from the likeness which its seeds have to the fruit of the beech-tree¹³⁰²; and in my opinion another name, that of Heidenkorn (heath-corn), by which it is known in Germany, has been given it because it thrives best in poor sandy soil where there is abundance of heath. From the epithets Turcicum and Saracenicum, its native country cannot be determined, for maize is called Turkish wheat, though it originally came from America. I consider also as improbable the conjecture of the learned Frisch¹³⁰³, that from the word Heide (a heathen), an expression little known in Upper Germany, has arisen the appellation of ethnicum¹³⁰⁴, and thence Saracenicum, given to this plant, though the Bohemians call it pohanka, from pohan, which signifies also a heathen.

There is reason to believe that this grain must have been common in many parts of Germany in the fifteenth century. In a bible, printed in Low-German, at Halberstadt, in the year 1522, entitled Biblia Dudesch, the translator, who is not known, but who is supposed to have been a catholic, translates a passage of Isaiah, chap. xxviii. ver. 25, which Luther translates er säet spelz, he soweth spelt, by the words he seyet bockwete, he soweth buck-wheat¹³⁰⁵. The name heydenkorn occurs in a catalogue of plants so early as the year 1552¹³⁰⁶; and Jos. Maaler, or Pictorius, has in his Dictionary, printed in octavo, at Zurich in 1561, Heidenkorn, Ocimum. I find there also, Heydel, a plant, Panicum. Dasypodius¹³⁰⁷ likewise in his Dictionary, of which I have the edition printed in 1537, says Panicum, Butzweyss, Heydel; and in a vocabulary of the names of plants added to it, Heydel, Panicum. Butz Weysz, Panicum. Frisch has the word Heydel-Fench, which he explains by Buck-wheat; and he remarks that in the Swiss dialect Buch is changed into Butz. Ryff or Rivius, a physician who lived in the middle of the sixteenth century, has changed Buch or Book into Bauch, and such errors often arise by transforming the High- into Low-German. It has, however, analogy in its favour, for the long o of the Low-German is in High-German often changed into au: for example, look, lauch; schmooken, smauchen; ook, auch; ooge, auge. But the long o of the Low-German becomes frequently the long u of the High-German; as good, gut; buch, buchbaum; book, bookbaum, &c.

That buck-wheat was cultivated in England about the year 1597, is proved by Gerard’s Herbal.

A new species of this grain has been made known of late years, under the name of Siberian buck-wheat, which appears by experience to have considerable advantages over the former. It was sent from Tartary to Petersburgh by the German botanists who travelled through that country in the beginning of the last century; and it has thence been dispersed over all Europe. We are however told in the new Swedish Economical Dictionary, that it was first brought to Finland by a soldier who had been a prisoner in Tartary¹³⁰⁸. Linnæus received the first seeds, in 1737, from Gerber the botanist¹³⁰⁹, and described the plant in his Hortus Cliffortianus. After this it was mentioned by Ammann¹³¹⁰, in 1739; but it must have been earlier known in Germany, at least in Swabia; for in 1733 it was growing in the garden of Dr. Ehrhart, at Memmingen¹³¹¹. In Siberia this plant sows itself for four or five years by the grains that drop, but at the end of that time the land becomes so full of tares that it is choked, and must be sown afresh. Even in the œconomical gardens in Germany it is propagated in the same manner; and it deserves to be remarked that it grows wild among the corn near Arheilgen, a few miles from Darmstadt, though it is cultivated nowhere in the neighbourhood. Had it been indigenous there, Ehrhart might in 1733 have raised it from German seed.

The appellation of Saracenicum gives me occasion to add the following remark: Ruellius¹³¹² says, that in his time a plant had begun to be introduced into the gardens of France, but merely for ornament, called Saracen-millet, the seeds of which were brought to that country about fifteen years before. This millet, which was from five to six feet in height, was undoubtedly a Holcus, and perhaps the same kind as that sought after by us for cultivation a few years ago, under the name of Holcus sorghum¹³¹³. This Holcus, however, was cultivated, at least in Italy, long before the time of Ruellius; for there is little reason to doubt that it was the Milium indicum which was brought from India to that country in the time of Pliny¹³¹⁴. That ancient naturalist says it was a kind of millet seven feet high; that it had black seeds, and was productive almost beyond what could be believed. In the time of Herodotus it was cultivated at Babylon, but it must have been then little known to the Greeks; for that historian would not venture to mention its size and fertility, as he was afraid that his veracity might be called in question¹³¹⁵. According to his account, it grew to be as large as a tree. It is worthy of remark, that this kind of millet is still cultivated at Babylon, where it was seen and admired by Rauwolf¹³¹⁶. It is undoubtedly the monstrous Holcus mentioned by Apollonius, who considered it as one of the most remarkable productions of India¹³¹⁷. It appears that it continued to be cultivated by the Italians in the middle ages; for it was described in the thirteenth century by Crescentio, who speaks of its use and the method of rearing it¹³¹⁸. The seeds had some time before been brought from Italy to Germany, and we find that it is on that account called Italian millet. The old botanists named it also Sorgsamen and Sorgsaat; appellations formed from sorghum. The name Morhirse, under which it again came to us from Switzerland, in later times¹³¹⁹, has arisen either from the black colour of one of the kinds, or it may signify the same as Moren-hirse (Moorish-millet), because it is almost the only corn of the sable Africans¹³²⁰. However this may be, it can never become an object of common cultivation among us, for our summer is neither sufficiently long nor sufficiently warm, to bring it to perfection. Last summer (1787) I could with difficulty obtain a few ripe grains for seed.

[The cultivation of buck-wheat has never been very extensive in this country, as it will not bear the frosts of our springs or the severity of winter. The only counties in which it is grown to a moderate extent are Norfolk and Suffolk, where it is called brank. If a small patch is occasionally met with elsewhere, it is in general principally for the sake of encouraging game, particularly pheasants, which are extremely fond of it.

The seed of the buck-wheat is said to be excellent for horses, the flowers for bees, and the plant green for soiling cows, cattle, sheep, or swine. No grain seems so eagerly eaten by poultry, or makes them lay eggs so soon or so abundantly. The flour is fine and white, but from a deficiency in gluten does not make good fermented bread; it serves well, however, for pastry and cakes, and in Germany and Holland is extensively used, especially by the farmers, dressed in a variety of ways, among others as pancakes, which if eaten hot are light and pleasant, but become very heavy as they cool. A hasty pudding made of the flour with water or milk, and eaten with butter and sugar, is considered a favourite dainty.]

SADDLES

In early ages the rider sat on the bare back of his horse without anything under him¹³²¹; but, in the course of time, some kind of covering, which consisted often of cloth, a mattress, a piece of leather or hide, was placed over the back of the animal. We are informed by Pliny¹³²², that one Pelethronius first introduced this practice; but who that person was is not certainly known. Such coverings became afterwards more costly¹³²³; they were made frequently in such a manner as to hang down on both sides of the horse, as may be seen by the beautiful engravings in Montfaucon¹³²⁴, and were distinguished among the Greeks and Romans by various names¹³²⁵; but even after they were common, it was reckoned more manly to ride without them. Varro boasts of having rode, when a young man, without a covering to his horse; and Xenophon¹³²⁶ reproaches the Persians because they placed more clothes on the backs of their horses than on their beds, and gave themselves more trouble to sit easily than to ride skilfully. On this account such coverings were for a long time not used in war; and the old Germans, who considered them as disgraceful, despised the Roman cavalry who employed them¹³²⁷. The information, therefore, of Dion Cassius¹³²⁸, according to whom such coverings were first allowed to the Roman cavalry by Nero, is very doubtful. This author, perhaps, alludes only to reviews, at which, it is probable, the cavalry were before obliged always to appear without them. In the time of Alexander Severus, the horses of the whole Roman cavalry had beautiful coverings¹³²⁹. Saddles, however, at that period were certainly unknown, though they afterwards obtained the old name ephippium, which originally signified nothing more than a covering for a horse. Xenophon says, a rider, whether placed on the bare back of the animal or on a covering, must not assume a position as if he sat upon one of those seats which people use in carriages¹³³⁰.

Our saddles at present consist of a wooden frame called the saddle-tree, which has on the fore part the pommel; behind it the crupper; and at the sides the stirrups. In the inside they are stuffed like a cushion, and on the outside are covered with leather or cloth. They are made fast to the horse by means of a girth which goes round the animal’s belly; and the breast-leather and crupper prevent them from being moved either forwards or backwards. It is extremely probable that they were invented in the middle of the fourth century: but it is hardly possible to find any certain proof; for we have reason to believe that the ancient covering was gradually transformed into a saddle. Pancirollus¹³³¹ thinks that the first mention of a saddle is to be found in Zonaras; and many have adopted his opinion. This historian relates that Constantine the younger was killed in the year 340 when he fell from his saddle. But in this proof alone I place very little confidence; and Pancirollus seems to have founded his assertion on the Latin translation, in which the word sella is used. Both the Greek and Latin terms¹³³², it is true, were employed at later periods to signify a proper saddle; but the Greek word was used long before for the back of the horse, or the place where the rider sat; and the words of Zonaras may be so understood as if Constantine was killed after he had fallen from his horse¹³³³.

Montfaucon¹³³⁴ has given a figure of the pillar of Theodosius the Great, on which he thinks he can distinguish a saddle; and indeed, if the engraving be correct, it must be allowed that the covering of the horse on which the rider sits seems, in the fore part, to resemble the pommel, and behind the extremity of the saddle-tree of our common saddles.

The clearest proof of the antiquity of saddles is the order of the emperor Theodosius in the year 385, by which those who wished to ride post-horses were forbidden to use saddles that weighed more than sixty pounds. If a saddle was heavier, it was to be cut to pieces¹³³⁵. This passage appears certainly to allude to a proper saddle, which at that period, soon after its invention, must have been extremely heavy; and we may conclude from it also, that every traveller had one of his own. As the saddle is here called sella, and as that word occurs oftener at this than at any other period, for the seat of the rider, it is probable that it is to be understood afterwards as signifying a real saddle. Besides, it cannot be denied that where it is used, many other little circumstances are found which may with great propriety be applied to our saddles.

Nazarius, in his panegyric on Constantine the Great, describing the manner in which the enemy’s cavalry were destroyed, says that, when almost lifeless, they hung sedilibus. Lipsius is of opinion that they could have hung in this manner only by saddles; but there is reason to think that they might lay hold of the coverings of the horses, if it be certain that these were girded to the animals like our saddles. Of this, however, there is no proof; for though some have asserted that postilena signified a girth, that meaning has not been supported by sufficient authorities; and it is more probable that the words postilena, antilena, and also postella and antella, as well as the girth itself, which they are supposed to express, were not introduced till after the invention of saddles. The first word occurs in Plautus¹³³⁶; but it perhaps alludes to some part of the harness of draught-horses or cattle. Vegetius¹³³⁷ distinguishes saddle-horses from others; and the saddle-tree seems to be mentioned by Sidonius Apollinaris¹³³⁸. In the fifth century saddles were made so extravagantly magnificent, that a prohibition was issued by the emperor Leo I. in which it was ordered that no one should ornament them with pearls or precious stones¹³³⁹. In the sixth century, the emperor Mauritius required that the saddles of the cavalry should have large coverings of fur¹³⁴⁰. Further information respecting saddles in later times may be seen in Du Cange, who has collected also various terms of art to which the invention of saddles gave rise, such as sellatores, saddlers, of which the French have made selliers; sellare, the saddle-tree; sellare and insellare, to saddle. The ignominious punishment of bearing the saddle, of which a good account may be found in Du Cange¹³⁴¹, had its origin in the middle ages. The conjecture of Goropius Becanus¹³⁴², that the saddle was invented by the Salii, and named after them, is not worth refutation; as it is perfectly clear that the denomination of sella arose from the likeness of a saddle to a chair; and by way of distinction Sidonius and the emperor Leo say sella equestris; and Jornandes says sella equitatoria. Others, perhaps, will pass no better judgement on a conjecture which I shall here venture to give. I consider it as probable that the invention of saddles belongs to the Persians; because, according to the testimony of Xenophon, they first began to render the seat of the rider more convenient and easy, by placing more covering on the backs of their horses than was usual in other countries. Besides, the horses of Persia were first made choice of in preference for saddle-horses, on account, perhaps, of their being early trained to bear a saddle, though Vegetius¹³⁴³ assigns a different reason.