LINEN AND LINEN MANUFACTURES, fabrics manufactured wholly from flax or lint (Lat. Linum). The manufacture of linen has reached its greatest perfection in France and the Netherlands, where the stimulus to produce fine yarns (see SPINNING) for the lacemakers has given rise to such care and attention in the cultivation and preparation of flax that in point of fineness of fiber they have been unequaled. Consequently the linens of France, Belgium, and Holland have long enjoyed a well-deserved reputation, and in the article of lawn, which is the finest kind of linen cloth made, the French are unrivaled. In the ordinary kinds of linen our own manufactures are rapidly improv ing, and will soon equal in quality the productions of continental competitors. Those of Ireland, especially, are remarkable for their excellence, and this trade has become a very important one in that country; whilst in Scotland a large trade in the coarser and inferior kinds has located itself. The export of linen manufactures and linen yarns from the United Kingdom in 1876 was in value L7,070,149; and the amount produced for home-consumption may be reckoned at X10,000,000.
The chief kinds of linen manufactures, besides yarn and thread, which will be described under SPINNING, are,. LAwN (Fr. linon), the finest of fiax manufactures, for merly exclusively a French production, but very fine lawns are now made in Belfast, Armagh, and Warringstown; cambric (q.v.); damask (q.v.); diaper (q.v.). Of the finer plain fabrics, sheetings are the most important in this country. The chief places of their manufacture are Belfast, Armagh, and Leeds. Common sheeting and toweling are very extensively manufactured in Scotland, particularly at Dundee, Kirkcaldy, Forfar, and Arbroath. _Ducks, huckabacks, osnaburgs, crash, and tick (corrupted from ticken and dekken, Dutch for cover) are verv coarse and heavy materials, some fully bleached, others unbleached or nearly so. `They are chiefly made in Scotland, the great scat of
the manufacture being at the towns jug, mentioned, although *much is made in the smaller towns and villages, also at Leeds and Barnsley in England. Some few varieties of velvet and velveteen are also made of flax at Manchester, and much linen-yarn is used as warp for other materials.
Linea is one of the most ancient of all textile manufactures, at least itfis one of the earliest mentioned. The cerecloth, in which the most ancieut mummies are wrapped, proves its early and very extensive use among the Egyptians. It formed also parts of the garments of the Hebrew as well as the Egyptian priests. Panopolis was the Belfast of the ancients, as, according to Strabo, it was there the manufacture of linen was chiefly conducted. The wonderful durability of linen is evidenced by its existence on mum mies, and by the remarkable fact mentioned by the German writer, Seetzen, and referred to by Blumenba.ch, that he had found SCITC1111 napkins within the folds of the covering on a mummy which he unwrapped, and that he had them washed several times without injury, and used with great veneration " this venerable linen, which had been woven more than 1700 years." From the time of these ancient Egyptians up to the present period, the use of linen for clothing and other purposes has been continuous; and although the introduction and vast development of the cotton manufacture checked its consumptiOn for a time, it has fully regained, and has Indeed exceeded, its former pro portions as one of our great staples.