Czytaj książkę: «A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume II (of 2)», strona 27

In the year 1614, the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Correr, persuaded an apprentice, Henry Mead, by the promise of five hundred pounds sterling, to go with a loom to Venice for a stated time, and to teach there the use of it. Mead met with a favourable reception in that city, and was much admired; but the loom becoming deranged, and no person at Venice being able to repair it, when the time of his agreement was expired, he returned to England. The Venetians had not resolution enough to continue the attempt; and sent the damaged loom, together with some bad imitations of it, to London, where they were sold for a mere trifle. Such is the account given in the petition before-mentioned.

Zano, however, an Italian writer⁹¹⁵, asserts, on the authority of information preserved in manuscript among family documents, that Correr carried two stocking-weavers with looms to Venice; that he immediately placed under them four apprentices, and when they went back to England sent with them a boy, who returned to Venice well-instructed in the art, and who continued to carry on business there with great success. Giambattista Carli of Gemona, a smith who worked in steel, saw the loom at Venice, which had been made after the model of those brought from England and sold to Francesco Alpruni of Udina. In a short time a great many stockings were manufactured there, and sent for sale, chiefly to Gradisca in Austria. But, in consequence of the poverty of the Venetian stocking-knitters, an order was issued that Carli should make no more looms; and this productive branch of business at Udina was so much deranged, that the masters removed with their looms to Gradisca, where the inhabitants of Udina were obliged to purchase such stockings as they had occasion to use.

Some years after the stocking-loom had been introduced at Venice, Abraham Jones, who understood stocking-weaving and the construction of the loom, though never regularly taught, went with some assistants to Amsterdam, where he worked on his own account two or three years, till he and his people were carried off by a contagious disease. The looms, because no one could use them, were sent to London and sold for a low price. In the petition to Cromwell the masters state, with great satisfaction, that in this manner the trade had remained in England; and, that it may be exclusively retained in their native country, they wish for the establishment of a privileged company.

It appears to me therefore proved beyond all doubt, that the stocking-loom was invented by William Lee, an Englishman, about the end of the sixteenth century; and this is admitted by some French writers, such as Voltaire⁹¹⁶ and the editor of the first Encyclopédie, whom the author of the Encyclopédie Méthodique however finds fault with. Other French writers, who are the more numerous party, wish to ascribe the honour of this invention to one of their own countrymen; but the proofs they bring are so weak that they scarcely deserve notice. Savary perhaps is the first person who publicly ventured to support this instance of Gallic vanity; at any rate he is quoted by the more modern writers as their authority when they wish to contradict the English.

According to his account, a Frenchman, of whom however he knows nothing further, invented the stocking-loom; but not being able to obtain the exclusive privilege of using it in his own country, went with it to England. The utility of it being soon discovered there, it was forbidden, under pain of death, to carry a loom or a model of it out of the kingdom. But another Frenchman, respecting whom he is equally ignorant, having seen the loom, the form of it made so deep an impression on his memory, that on his return he copied it exactly; and from this loom all the others used in France and Holland were constructed. Savary adds, did the invention belong to the English, who are accustomed to pay due honour to those who discover useful things, they undoubtedly could tell the name of the inventor, which however they are not able to do. It is very strange that this should be written by a Frenchman, who himself did not know the name of the French inventor, or of the person who carried back the invention. No order to prevent the exportation of the stocking-loom was issued in England so early, else it would certainly have been mentioned in the petition presented to Cromwell. It was not till the eighth year of the reign of William III., that is 1696, when looms were everywhere common, that the exportation of them was forbidden; probably because the best were made in England, and it was wished that the gradual improvement of them should be kept secret. The penalty also was not death, but a fine and confiscation of the looms.

Some have endeavoured to give an air of probability to this assertion of Savary, by the relation of an apothecary in the Hotel-Dieu at Paris. This person is said to have declared that the inventor was a journeyman locksmith of Lower Normandy, who gave a pair of silk stockings, his own workmanship, to Colbert, in order that they might be presented to Louis XIV.; but as the marchands bonetiers, who dealt in articles knit according to the old manner, caused several loops of these stockings to be cut by some of the servants at court, whom they had bribed for that purpose, they did not meet with approbation. The inventor was so hurt by this disappointment, that he sold the loom to an Englishman, and died an old man in the Hotel-Dieu, where the apothecary became acquainted with him. It was necessary to expose the lives of many workmen, and even of some men of learning, in order to bring back a loom to France. Romè de la Platière adds, that he heard at Nimes, that in the time of Colbert a person of that place, named Cavellier, carried the first loom to France; and that, in the course of fifty years, the number of the looms in that town and neighbourhood increased to some thousands. It appears much more certain that the stocking manufactory, as Savary asserts, was established at the castle of Madrid in the Bois Boulogne near Paris, in the year 1656, under the direction of John Hindret.

I do not know at what time the first loom was brought to Germany; but it is certain that this branch of manufacture was spread chiefly by the French refugees who sought shelter in that country after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Winkelmann says expressly, that they carried the first looms to Hesse. This is not at all improbable, because our stocking manufacturers give French names to every part of their looms, as well as to their different kinds of work. Becher boasts of having introduced the loom at Vienna, and of having first constructed looms of wood. At present many wooden ones are made at Obernhau in the Erzgebürge, and sold at the rate of twenty-eight dollars; whereas iron ones, of the most inferior kind, are sold in Vogtland for sixty or seventy.

[In 1663 a charter was granted by Charles II. to the Frame-work Knitters’ Society of London (stocking-makers), which had been refused to them a few years before by Oliver Cromwell. Six years afterwards the number of stocking-frames in England amounted to 700, employing 1200 workmen, three-fifths of whom made silk stockings, and the others worsted; for cotton was not then ranked among English manufactures. By 1714 the number of frames had increased to 8000 or 9000. Some years after this, the Frame-work Knitters’ Company attempted to control both the manufacture itself, and the making and selling of the stockings; but the project failed. By the year 1753 the number of frames in England was 14,000. In 1758 a machine for making ribbed stockings was patented by Mr. Strutt of Belper.

In 1838 stocking-frames with a rotatory action, and worked by steam, were successfully brought into use in Nottingham. Of the present extent and value of the hosiery manufacture, perhaps the best estimate is that made a few years ago by Mr. Felkin of Nottingham. This gentleman calculates the value of cotton hosiery annually made at £880,000, that of worsted at £870,000, and that of silk at £241,000. He estimates the number of stockings annually manufactured at 3,510,000 dozens; and in the production of these there are used 4,584,000 lbs. of raw cotton, value £153,000; 140,000 lbs. of raw silk, value £91,000; and 6,318,000 lbs. of English wool, value £316,000; making the total value of the materials £560,000, which are ultimately converted into the exchangeable value of £1,991,000. The total number of persons employed is 73,000.]

HOPS

My object, in this article, is not to give a history of beer, because for that purpose it would be necessary to define accurately the different kinds of grain mentioned in the writings of the Greeks and the Romans; and this would be a tedious, as well as difficult, and to me a very unpleasant labour; as I should be obliged to controvert a great many received opinions. I shall only endeavour to answer the question, Where and at what time did hops begin to be used as an addition to beer? This subject has already engaged the attention of two learned men⁹¹⁷, whose researches I shall employ and enlarge by my own observations.

Hops at present are so well known, that a formal description of them would be superfluous. I think it necessary, however, for the sake of perspicuity, to state what follows. This plant at present grows wild in the greater part of Europe, and in Germany is common in the hedges and fences. It clings to the trunks of trees, and often climbs round poles, if long enough, to the height of twenty or thirty feet. It is almost everywhere rough and sharp to the touch, and sometimes clammy. The leaves are generally divided into three, and often into five indented lobes; but the upper ones are shaped like a heart and undivided. The male plants bear flowers, like those of the currant-bush or of the male hemp; the female plants produce their flowers in cones, which are not unlike those of the fir, except that the latter are woody, while the former are foliaceous. These cones only are used for beer; on that account the female plants alone are cultivated, and from these they are picked and dried as soon as they begin to become pulverulent. They are transplanted or propagated by means of seedlings, in hop-grounds properly prepared, where the cones become larger and better than those of the wild plants, which however are not entirely useless. They are added to beer to render it more palatable, by giving it an agreeable bitter taste; and, at the same time, to make it keep longer; and it must indeed be confessed, that of the numerous and various additions which since the earliest periods have been tried, none has better answered the purpose, or been more generally employed.

Among the botanists of the last two centuries, who perused the writings of the Greeks and the Romans, and endeavoured to discover those plants which they meant to describe, many imagined that they found in them hops. But when one takes the trouble to examine without prejudice their opinions, nothing appears but a very slight probability; and some even of these learned botanists, such as Matthioli and others, have acknowledged that it cannot be proved that the Greeks and the Romans were acquainted with our hops.

The plant which perhaps has been chiefly considered as the hop is the Smilax aspera⁹¹⁸ of Dioscorides⁹¹⁹, the same no doubt as that described by Theophrastus under the name of smilax, without any epithet⁹²⁰. That the description agrees for the most part with our hops cannot be denied; but it is equally true that it might be applied, with no less propriety, to many other creeping plants, and certainly with the greatest probability to that which in the Linnæan system has retained the name Smilax aspera. What the Grecian writer says of the fruit is particularly applicable to this plant; but, on the other hand, it differs from the fruit of the hop.

One might with more probability conjecture that hops occur in Pliny⁹²¹, under the name Lupus salictarius. But the whole of what he says of this plant is, that it was esculent, and grew in the willow plantations. This is undoubtedly true of hops, for that the young shoots are eaten in spring as salad is well known; but the name lupus alone has induced the commentator to apply all this, though equally applicable to other plants, to our hop, which at present is called lupulus. Much more unfounded is the conjecture, that the hop is that wild plant which, according to the account of Cato, was used as fodder for cattle⁹²². But the word in manuscripts is differently written, and consequently uncertain; besides, there are many plants which might be employed in the place of straw.

It is certainly possible that hops might have been in use among the northern nations, at the time of these writers, without their having any knowledge of them; for the Romans were acquainted with beer only from the accounts given of the Germans and their manners⁹²³, and they considered that beverage merely as an unsuccessful imitation of their wine. But I agree in opinion with Conring, Meibomius, and others, that hops were not used till a much later period. The names humulus and lupulus also are of no great antiquity. The former is the oldest, and seems to belong to the people who first added this improvement to beer. The humble and humle of the Swedes and Danes, the chumel of the Bohemians, the houblon of the French and the Spanish, Hungarian and Persian appellations, all seem to be derived from the same origin, as well as the Latin names of later times, humelo, humolo, humulo, humlo⁹²⁴. Lupulus does not occur till a much later period. The German word, which the English also have adopted, appears first to have been written hoppe, from which was formed afterwards in High German Hopfen, by converting, as it commonly does, the double p into the harder pf. Thus from toppe it has made topf, and from koppe, kopf, &c. As far as I know, this word is found, for the first time, in a dictionary which seems to be of the tenth century⁹²⁵, and which has Timalus, Hoppe and Brandigabo Feldhoppe. According to my conjecture, timalus has been erroneously printed for humulus; but in regard to brandigabo I can give no explanation. It is derived perhaps from brace or bracium. The former was known to Pliny⁹²⁶; and the latter occurs in the same dictionary along with the translation, malt.

No mention is made of hops either in Walafrid Strabo, who died in 849, or in Æmilius Macer, who cannot have lived earlier than the year 850; in the laws of the old Franks, in which beer and malt are often mentioned, or in the Capitulare de Villis Imperatoris, which are ascribed to Charles the Great. Had beer been then used and brewed in Germany, it would certainly have been at any rate mentioned by the emperor. Haller says⁹²⁷ it is related by Isidorus that the experiment of adding hops to beer was first made in Italy. Were this the case, it would be the oldest mention of that circumstance, for Isidorus died in the year 636. It is however not only highly improbable that the use of hops should be discovered in Italy, which is a wine country, but it can be proved to be false. Not the smallest notice of it is to be found in the whole work of Isidorus; and in the Bibliotheca Botanica, when Haller had the book before him and extracted from it many things remarkable, he does not repeat this assertion⁹²⁸. The passage which has given rise perhaps to this error, appears to be that where the author describes a kind of beer called by him celia, and where the germination of corn, the shooting of malt, and the sweet wort made from it, together with its fermentation, are clearly mentioned, but not hops⁹²⁹. Some one perhaps thought that hops also ought to be supposed in this passage, else beer would not acquire that strong taste and intoxicating quality spoken of by Isidorus, who very properly ascribes both to fermentation. The same account has been repeated by Vincentius⁹³⁰, without any change or addition. But as Isidorus scarcely contains anything which is not borrowed from earlier writers, I endeavoured to discover the source of that information, and at length found it in the history of Orosius⁹³¹, who, as is well known, lived in the fifth century.

In the Latin translation of the works of the Arabian physician Mesue⁹³² is a description, but as is commonly the case, a defective one, of a creeping plant, with rough indented leaves under the name of lupulus, which indeed corresponds exceedingly well with our hops. The cones in particular are exactly described. The author, however, speaks there only of the medicinal qualities of the plant, and makes no mention of its application to beer. Mesue lived about the year 845, consequently is the first who uses the term lupuli. But we have only a wretched old translation of the writings of this physician; it is probable that the word lupulus comes only from the translator. This passage therefore can prove nothing.

It is however certain that hops were known in the time of the Carolingian dynasty, for a letter of donation by King Pepin speaks of humolariæ, which without doubt must have been hop-gardens⁹³³. In like manner Adelard, abbot of Corbey, in the year 822, freed the millers belonging to his district from all labour relating to hops, and on this occasion employed the words humlo and brace, by which is to be understood corn and malt used for beer. In the Frisingen collection of ancient documents, there are many which were written in the time of Ludovicus Germanicus, consequently in the middle of the ninth century; and in some of these, hop-gardens, which were then called humularia, are mentioned⁹³⁴. In the tax registers of the two following centuries, among the articles delivered to churches and monasteries, modii and moldera humuli are very often named⁹³⁵. Hop-fields and the delivery of hops occur much oftener in the thirteenth century, under the appellations humuleta, humileta, and humularia⁹³⁶. In the Sachsenspiegel⁹³⁷ and the municipal law of Magdeburg (Weichbildsrechte⁹³⁸), there is an order in regard to the hop-plants which grew over hedges. I shall omit the still more numerous instances where they occur in the fourteenth century as well as the proofs that hops were then cultivated in many parts of Germany; and it is perhaps true, as said by Möhsen, and after him by Fischer, on whose bare word however I do not entirely rely, that many towns in Germany were indebted for the great sale of their beer to the use of hops (which undoubtedly appears to be a German discovery), and to their peculiar goodness. However, it is certain that this method of seasoning beer was adopted at a much later period by our neighbours the English, Dutch, Swedes, and others.

If the two passages above quoted, where the word lupuli occurs, be rejected because they are doubtful, I must consider this name of hops to be more modern than the word humulus; and if this be true, it is impossible to believe, with Du Cange, that the latter was formed from the first by throwing away the initial letter. As yet I had not found the name lupulus given to hops earlier than the thirteenth century.

About this time lived Simon of Genoa, commonly called Johannes de Janua or Januensis, who also had the surname of Cordus. He was physician to Pope Nicholas IV.; afterwards chaplain and sub-deacon to Pope Boniface VIII.; and therefore flourished at the end of the thirteenth century. Of his writings none is better known, or was formerly more esteemed, than his Catholicon, a book in which he describes, in alphabetical order, all the substances then used in medicine, and on which, as he says himself, he was employed thirty years. In this dictionary, which is commonly considered as the first of the Materia medica, there is an article under the head lupulus, copied however from the before-mentioned Latin translation of Mesue, but with the addition, that this plant by the French and Germans is named humilis, and that the flowers of it were used in a beverage which he calls medo⁹³⁹. This Italian, however, does not seem to have been properly acquainted with the subject; for he tells us himself⁹⁴⁰, that under the name medo or mead, is understood a beverage made of diluted honey, for which hops are never employed. In Italy also, at that time, hops were not in use. About the same period, Arnold de Villanova, in his commentary on the work on Regimen, published by John of Milan, in the name of the celebrated school of Salerno, mentions lupuli, and the use of them in brewing beer⁹⁴¹.

Professor Tychsen, to whose friendship I have been frequently indebted for assistance in my researches, suggested to me the conjecture that lupulus perhaps is derived from lupinus, because Columella says that the bitter seeds of this plant were added, in Egypt, to beer in order to moderate its sweetness⁹⁴². This use is confirmed also by G. W. Lorsbach, from the Arabic historian Ebn Chalican⁹⁴³. At any rate, this proves that in Egypt at that time bitter things began to be added to beer. It is also well known that in Italy lupines were rendered fit for the use of man as well as of animals, by macerating them in water⁹⁴⁴; and I am of opinion, that on this account Varro required water to be in the neighbourhood of a farm-yard⁹⁴⁵. Lupines softened in water are still employed for making dough. But if lupulus was formed from lupinus, it must however be proved that the use of it for beer was common beyond the boundaries of Egypt. Even if we admit with Schöttgen, that the poet employs zythum for beer in general, this beverage was never used in Italy, and I have met with no other mention of lupines in brewing.

In the breweries of the Netherlands, hops seem to have been first known in the beginning of the fourteenth century; for about this time we find many complaints that the new method of brewing with hops lessened the consumption of gruit, and also the income arising from gruitgeld. The word gruit seems to have many meanings: in the first place it signifies malt; but though I formerly considered this as the proper meaning, and though some approved my opinion, I must confess that on further examination I am not able fully to prove it. In the second place, it signified a certain tax paid at each time of brewing: thirdly, a certain addition of herbs used for beer in the fourteenth century: and in the last place, the beer brewed with it was itself sometimes called gruit.

That this word always denoted malt is impossible; for it is said that after hops were introduced, less gruit was used and sold than formerly had been the case. But how could hops be employed instead of malt? John, bishop of Liege and Utrecht, complained to the emperor Charles IV., that for thirty or forty years a new method of brewing, that is to say, with the addition of a certain plant called humulus or hoppa, had been introduced, and that his income arising from gruitgeld had been thereby much lessened. The emperor, therefore, in the year 1364, permitted him, for the purpose of making good his loss, to demand a groschen for each cask of hops; and this right was confirmed to bishop Arnold by pope Gregory⁹⁴⁶. By this and similar accounts I am induced to conjecture that a beverage composed of different herbs was at that time prepared, and that the sale of this mixture and of gruit was converted into a so-called regale. Nay, it almost appears that gruit was a fermenting substance, indispensably necessary to beer, instead of the yeast used at present.

According to every appearance the ancient beer could not be long kept; and beer fit to be preserved seems to have come into use after the introduction of hops. The oldest writers who treat of the good and bad effects of hops, reckon among the latter, that they dried up the body and increased melancholy; but among their good qualities, they praise their property of preserving liquors from corruption⁹⁴⁷. It was soon remarked also, that the keeping of beer depended a great deal on the season in which it was brewed; for M. Anton quotes from the Ilm statutes of 1350, that people were permitted to brew only from Michaelmas to St. Walpurgis’ day⁹⁴⁸; at other times it was forbidden under certain penalties. At that period various kinds of beer seem to have been in use, and perhaps became fashionable instead of wine, coffee, and tea. Thus M. Anton quotes, from a Hervord document of the year 1144, cervisia mellita and non mellita. However, even at present, honey is used for many kinds of beer; such for example as that brewed at Nimeguen, which has an extensive sale under the name of moll, a word derived no doubt from mollig, mild; which is applied also to wine. In the same manner the English used liquorice.

In England, the use of hops seems to have been introduced at a much later period; but it is said that they were at first considered as a dangerous production, and that the planting of them was forbidden in the reign of Henry VI., about the middle of the fifteenth century⁹⁴⁹. This I will not venture to deny, though I very much doubt it. I have found no proof of it in any English writer, and I have searched in vain for the prohibition among the orders of that prince, in which however there occurs one in regard to malt⁹⁵⁰. On the contrary, many English historians assert that the use of hops was first made known in England by some people from Artois, in the reign of Henry VIII., or about the year 1524⁹⁵¹. It is nevertheless true, that this sovereign, in an order respecting the servants of his household, in the twenty-second year of his reign, that is in 1530, forbade brewers to put into ale hops and sulphur⁹⁵². But perhaps his majesty was not fond of hopped beer. Even at present, most of the dictionaries call ale, beer brewed without hops; and an English physician says expressly that the difference between ale and beer is, that hops are not employed for the former⁹⁵³. But according to the English instructions for brewing, hops are required for ale also.

In the English laws hops are mentioned for the first time in the fifth year of the reign of Edward VI., that is in 1552, at which period some privileges were granted to hop-grounds. The cultivation of hops however, which, like the art of brewing, has in England been carried to the greatest perfection, was very limited even in the beginning of the seventeenth century; for James I., in the fifth year of his reign, that is in 1603, found it necessary to forbid, under severe penalties, the introduction and use of spoilt and adulterated hops. At that time, therefore, England did not produce a quantity sufficient for its own consumption.

In Sweden, at least in the fifteenth century, hops seem not to have been very common⁹⁵⁴; for at that time sweet gale (Myrica gale) was employed for beer; and so generally, that king Christopher, in 1440, confirmed the old law, that those who collected this plant before a certain period, on any common or on another person’s land, should be subjected to a fine. A similar punishment however was appointed for the too early picking of hops; and the cultivation of them was so strongly enforced, that every farmer who had not forty poles with hops growing round them was punished, unless he could show that his land was unfit for producing them⁹⁵⁵.

But it was long doubted in Sweden whether this plant would thrive in the cold climate of that country; in which however it grows wild. In the time of Gustavus I., who became king in 1523, Sweden was obliged to give for the foreign hops it used 1200 schifpfunds of iron, which was about the ninth part of all the iron made in the kingdom. In the year 1558 the king complained, in an edict, that a pound of hops cost as much as a barrel of malt, and on that account was desirous to encourage the cultivation of the hop-plant. But his exertions were attended with so little effect, that even under the reign of queen Christina, that is, in the middle of the seventeenth century, all the hops used in the kingdom were imported from Germany, and particularly from Brunswick and Saxony. The queen had some hop plantations as rarities in her garden; yet the cultivation of hops was begun under this princess, and carried so far that German hop farmers, who before had been accustomed to travel to Sweden every three years, to receive payment and take new orders, returned very much dissatisfied, and suffered a part of their hop-grounds to run to waste. Under Charles XI., however, who reigned from 1660 to 1697, the cultivation of hops was first brought to a state of considerable improvement.

In the year 1766, Linnæus hazarded a conjecture that hops, spinage, chenopodium, tarragon, and many other garden vegetables were brought to Europe by the Goths, during their periods of emigration, from Russia and particularly the Ukraine, because the old writers make no mention of these plants, and because in those districts they all grow wild at present⁹⁵⁶. It however appears certain that hops belong to our indigenous plants, as they grow everywhere wild in Germany, Switzerland, England, and Sweden, and even in countries into which the cultivation of them has never yet been introduced, and where it cannot be supposed that they accidentally became wild by being conveyed from hop-fields and gardens. The want of information in works older than the emigrations of the northern tribes, is no proof that a plant did not then exist. At that time there was no Linnæus to transmit plants to posterity, as Hipparchus, according to the expression of Pliny, did the stars. Such vegetable productions only as had become remarkable on account of their utility or hurtful qualities, or by some singular circumstance, occur in the works of the ancients. Many others remained unknown, or at least without names, till natural history acquired a systematic form; and even at present botanists have often the satisfaction to discover some plant not before observed.

Is it probable that the Chinese even are acquainted with our hops? They have a kind of beer made from barley and wheat, which is called tarasun; and according to the account of J. G. Gmelin, who purposely made himself acquainted with the preparation of it, hops formed by pressure into masses, shaped like a brick, are added to it⁹⁵⁷. It is well known that the Chinese have also a kind of tea formed into cakes by strong pressure. Our hops are compressed in the same manner in Bohemia; and in that state will keep without losing any of their strength for fifty years. They are put into a sack or bag of coarse canvass, and subjected to a press. A square sewed bag, each side of which is two ells, contains fifty bushels of hops prepared in this manner; and when any of them are required for brewing, the bag is made fast to a beam, and as much as may be necessary is cut out with an axe. The whole mass is of a brown colour, and has a resemblance to pitch, in which not a single hop-leaf can be distinguished. Whether the Chinese conceived the idea of employing our common hops for the like purpose, is a question of some importance in regard to the history of them; but at present I am not able to answer it.