'd would indanger
the oversetting of his Wherry.

* * * * *

Observ. III. _Of fine Lawn, or Linnen Cloth._

This is another product of Art, A piece of the finest Lawn I was able to
get, so curious that the threads were scarce discernable by the naked eye,
and yet through an ordinary _Microscope_ you may perceive[4] what a goodly
piece of _coarse Matting_ it is; what proportionable cords each of its
threads are, being not unlike, both in shape and size, the bigger and
coarser kind of _single Rope-yarn_, wherewith they usually make _Cables_.
That which makes the Lawn so transparent, is by the _Microscope_, nay by
the naked eye, if attentively viewed, plainly enough evidenced to be the
multitude of square holes which are left between the threads, appearing to
have much more hole in respect of the intercurrent parts then is for the
most part left in a _lattice-window_, which it does a little resemble,
onely the crossing parts are round and not flat.

These threads that compose this fine contexture, though they are as small
as those that constitute the finer sorts of Silks, have notwithstanding
nothing of their glossie, pleasant, and lively reflection. Nay, I have been
informed both by the Inventor himself, and several other eye-witnesses,
that though the flax, out of which it is made, has been (by a singular art,
of that excellent Person, and Noble Vertuoso, M. _Charls Howard_, brother
to the _Duke of Norfolk_) so curiously dress'd and prepar'd, as to appear
both to the eye and the touch, full as _fine_ and as _glossie_, and to
receive all kinds of colours, as well as Sleave-Silk; yet when this Silken
Flax is twisted into threads, it quite loseth its former luster, and
becomes as plain and base a thread to look on, as one of the same bigness,
made of common Flax.

The reason of which odd _Phenomenon_ seems no other then this; that though
the curiously drest Flax has its parts so exceedingly small, as to
equallize, if not to be much smaller then the clew of the Silk-worm,
especially in thinness, yet the differences between the figures of the
constituting filaments are so great, and their substances so various, that
whereas those of the _Silk_ are _small_, _round_, _hard_, _transparent,_
and to their bigness proportionably _stiff_, so as each filament preserves
its proper _Figure_, and consequently its vivid _reflection_ intire, though
twisted into a thread, if not too hard; those of Flax