A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

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.

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.

684

“As the Turks are unacquainted with insurance, they do not lend money but at the rate of fifteen or twenty per cent. But when they lend to merchants who trade by sea, they charge thirty per cent.” – Remarques d’un Voyageur Moderne au Lévant. Amst. 1773, 8vo.

685

De Jure Naturæ et Gentium.

686

Droit de la Nature.

687

De Jure Maritimo. Holmiæ, 1650.

688

Collegium Grotianum, Francof. 1722, 4to.

689

Lib. xxiii. cap. 44.

690

Lib. xxv. cap. 3.

691

Lib. v. cap. 18. Langenbec, in his Anmerkungen über das Hamburgische Schiff-und-Seerecht, p. 370, is of opinion that no traces of insurance are to be found either in Livy or Suetonius.

692

Epist. ad Famil. ii. ep. 17.

693

Ayreri Diatribe de Cambialis Instituti Vestigiis apud Romanos, added to Uhle’s edition of Heineccii Elementa Juris Cambialis.

694

De Jure Maritimo et Nautico. Gryphis. 1652.

695

Lex Mercatoria, or the Ancient Law-Merchant, by Gerard Malynes. London, 1656, fol. p. 105.

696

Seldeni Mare Clausum. Lond. 1636, p. 428.

697

Bourdeaux, 1661, 4to.

698

Auszug der Historie des Allgemeinen und Preussischen See-rechts. Konigsberg, 1747, 4to, p. 32.

699

De Jure Mercatorum et Commerciorum.

700

Entitled, ’T boek der Zee-rechten. Amst. 1664, 4to.

701

The title runs thus: Il consolato del mare, nei quale si comprendono tutti gli statuti et ordini, disposti da gli antichi per ogni cosa di mercantia et di navigare. Leyden, 1704, 4to.

702

In that old treatise, Le Guidon, inserted in Cleirac, it is remarked, chap. i. art. i. that in old times insurances were made without any writings: they were then called Assecurances en confiance; Confidential insurances.

[M‘Culloch, in his Dictionary of Commerce, art. Insurance, observes respecting this passage, that “Beckmann seems to have thought that the practice of insurance originated in Italy, in the latter part of the fifteenth or the early part of the sixteenth century. But the learned Spanish antiquary, Don Antonio de Capmany, has given, in his very valuable publication on the History and Commerce of Barcelona (Memorias Historicas sobre la Marina, &c., de Barcelona, t. ii. p. 383), an ordinance relative to insurance, issued by the magistrates of that city in 1435; whereas the earliest Italian law on the subject is nearly a century later, being dated in 1523. It is however exceedingly unlikely, had insurance been as early practised in Italy as in Catalonia, that the former should have been so much behind the latter in subjecting it to any fixed rules; and it is still more unlikely that the practice should have escaped, as is the case, all mention by any previous Italian writer. We therefore agree entirely in Capmany’s opinion, that until some authentic evidence to the contrary be produced, Barcelona should be regarded as the birth-place of this most useful and beautiful application of the doctrine of chances.” Had M‘Culloch consulted the treatise on Bills of Exchange, given in a subsequent part of the work (vol. iii. p. 430), he would have found that Beckmann, in noticing the curious memoirs of Capmany, with which he had then become acquainted, distinctly mentions “An ordinance of the year 1458 respecting insurance, which required that underwriting should be done in the presence of a notary, and declared polices o scriptores privades to be null and void.”]

703

Versuche über Assecuranzen, etc. Hamb. 1753, 4to.

704

I found nothing on the subject, either in Delia decima – e della Mercatura de’ Fiorentini, fino al secolo xvi. Lisbona e Lucca, 1765, 1766, 4 vols. 4to, which contains a variety of useful information respecting the history of the Florentine trade, or in Mecatti, Storia Chronologica della città di Firenze. In Napoli 1775, 2 vols. 4to.

705

Stracchæ aliorumque Jurisconsultorum de Cambiis, Sponsionibus, &c., Decisiones. Amst. 1669, fol. p. 24.

706

It may be found in Ordonantien ende Placcaeten ghepubliceert Vlaenderen. Antwerp, 1662, fol. i. p. 360.

707

Ordonantien ende Placcaeten, ii. p. 307. Groote Placaet-boeck der Ver. Nederlanden, i. p. 796. Magens, p. 397.

708

Ordonantien ende Placcaeten, ut supra, p. 335. Groote Placaet-boeck, i. p. 828, and in the additions, ii. p. 2116.

709

The changes which this institution afterwards underwent, with an extract from its regulations, may be seen in La Richesse de la Hollande. Lond. 1778, 4to, i. p. 81.

710

[The marine insurers are called in this country under-writers, because they write their names under the policy. Under the authority of statute 6 George I. cap. 18, two corporate bodies, called the Royal Exchange Assurance Company and the London Assurance Company, were chartered by the crown. There are at present seven marine insurance companies in London: – the two old chartered companies above-mentioned; two established immediately upon the passing of the act of the year 1824, the Alliance and the Indemnity Mutual; the Marine, established in 1836; and the General Marine and Neptune, established in 1839.]

711

Dictionary of Commerce.

712

Krunitz, Oekonomische Encyclopedie, xiii. p. 221; where an account may be found of other companies.

713

Winkelmanns Oldenburgischen Friedens- und der benachbarten Oerter Kriegshandlungen. 1671 fol. p. 67.

714

[The publisher of the present volumes pays upwards of £200 per annum for insurance on his stock in trade, and therefore feels strongly the force of this observation. – H. G. B.]

715

Life insurances have been forbidden by the laws of France and of many other foreign states, as being of a gambling nature, and opening the door to a variety of abuses and frauds.

716

Plin. lib. xxiii. cap. 2. Palladius, Octob. 18. edit. Gesneri, ii. p. 994.

717

Proofs of this will be found in Columella De Re Rustica, lib. xii. c. 19, 20. Cato De Re Rust. cap. cv. and cap. cvii., and Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 21.

718

Proofs that the ancients mixed their wine with sea-water may be found in Pliny, lib. xxiii. cap. 1. and lib. xiv. cap. 20. Celsus exclaims against it, lib. ii. cap. 25. Dioscorides, lib. v. cap. 7, 9, &c. p. 573. See Petri Andreæ Matthioli Commentarii in sex libros Dioscoridis de materia medica. Venetiis, in officina Erasmi Vincentii Valgrisii, 1553, fol.

719

Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 20. This method of proof is given more circumstantially in Geopon. lib. vii. cap. 15.

720

Pallad. August. c. ii. vol. ii. p. 977.

721

[The solvent action of water upon lead is highly interesting on account of the very general use of leaden pipes and cisterns lined with this metal. From the researches of Lieut. – Col. Yorke, published in the Philosophical Magazine for August 1834 and January 1846, it would appear that a bright leaden vessel containing pure water, such as distilled water, and exposed to the air, soon becomes oxidized and corroded; oxide of lead being readily detected in solution by means of sulphuretted hydrogen and other sensitive tests; but river and spring water exert a much less or no such solvent power, the carbonates and sulphates in such water preventing it. It is on this account that leaden vessels are used with such impunity, the crust which forms upon the metal entirely preventing all further action. However, as this crust consists partially of carbonate of lead, which is a very dangerous poison, great care should be taken on cleaning or scraping such cisterns to avoid using the water in which particles of the salt may have become diffused. Leaden cisterns are sometimes rendered unsafe in consequence of iron or zinc pipes being soldered or let into them, thus giving rise to galvanic action, which greatly facilitates the solution of the lead.]

722

Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 20. The same author relates a great many arts practised in regard to wine.

723

Plin. lib. xiv. cap. 19. That this method was practised in Italy is confirmed by Columella, lib. xii. cap. 20, and Didymus in Geopon. lib. vi. cap. 18. It is mentioned also by Dioscorides and Theophrastus.

724

Plin. lib. xxiii. cap. 1.

725

Ibid. lib. xxxvi. cap. 24.

726

“The wine of the island of Zante is almost as strong as brandy. It is supposed that this proceeds from the unslaked lime which is usually mixed with it, under the pretence that it then keeps better, and is fitter to be transported by sea.” – D’Arvieux, Voyages.

727

Christophori a Vega de Arte Medendi, lib. ii. cap. 2.

728

“No one sells wine at Tunis but the slaves, and this wine is not under the jurisdiction of the Tunisian government. They put lime in it, which renders it very intoxicating.” – Thevenot’s Voyages.

729

In Anleitung zur Verbesserung der Weine in Teutschland, Franck. and Leipsic, 1775, 8vo, the moderate use of lime is recommended. In France crude potash is put into wine instead of lime. [Acidity in wine was formerly corrected in this country by the addition of quick-lime. This furnishes a clue to Falstaff’s observation that there was “lime in the sack,” which was a hit at the landlord, as much as to say his wine was worth little, having its acidity thus disguised. Carbonate of soda is now most frequently used for the purpose.]

730

“The properties of lead and arsenic are well understood; but what those of the ancient gypsums were, will require an explanation; as there seems to be just reason to believe, that some of them contained a portion of metallic or arsenical earth.” – A Candid Examination of what has been advanced on the Colic of Poitou and Devonshire, by James Hardy, London, i. 8vo, p. 84.

731

Plin. lib. xxxv.

732

Geopon. pp. 462, 483, 494.

733

Ibid. vii. 12, p. 483.

734

Ibid. p. 486.

735

Ibid. p. 486.

736

Lib. iv. tit. 3. § 13.

737

Digestor. lib. ix. tit. 2. leg. 27. § 15. Later jurists call the adulteration of wine crimen stellionatus.

738

De pace imperii publica. Ulmæ 1698, p. 632.

739

Goldast. Constit. Imper. tom. ii. p. 114.

740

Mémoires sur les questions proposées par l’Académie de Bruxelles en 1777. A Bruxelles 1778, 4to.

741

Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, p. 514. [“In France it does not appear that lead in any form has been employed in making or altering their wines. On the 13th of March 1824, a member of the Chamber of Deputies moved for a law to punish the practice. The motion was rejected, because neither litharge nor any other preparation of lead was shown to have been used, nor was any instance cited in which it had been detected, though an ordinance was made against its use in 1696.” – Redding’s History and Description of Wines. Lond. 1836, p. 336.]

742

“I wish those who adulterate wine were punished with greater severity; for this execrable fraud, as well as many more deceptions, has been invented in the present age; and a villany by which the colour, taste, smell and substance of wine are so changed as to resemble that of another country, has been spread not only through Germany, but also through France, Hungary and other kingdoms. It was invented, they say, by a monk named Martin Bayr, of Schwarzen-Eychen in Franconia. He undoubtedly merits eternal damnation for rendering noxious and destructive a liquor used for sacred purposes, and most agreeable to the human body; thus contaminating and debasing a gift of nature inferior to none called forth from the bosom of the earth by the influence of the solar rays; and for converting, like a sanguinary destroyer of the human race, that bestowed upon us by Nature to promote mirth and joy, and as a soother of our cares, into a poison and the cause of various distempers. But if the debasers of the current coin are punished capitally, what punishment ought to be inflicted upon the person who hath either killed or thrown into diseases all those who used wine? The former by their fraud injure a few, but the latter exposes to various dangers people of all ages, and of both sexes; occasions barrenness in women; brings on abortions and makes them miscarry; corrupts and dries up the milk of nurses; excites gouty pains in the body; causes others in the bowels and reins, than which none can be more excruciating; and produces ulcers in the intestines; in short, his poison inflames, corrodes, burns, extenuates, and dries up; nor does it allay, but increase thirst; for such is the nature of sulphur, which, mixed with other noxious and poisonous things, the names of which I should be ashamed to mention, is added to wine, before it has done fermenting, in order to change its nature. This poison we have been obliged to purchase for our friends, wives, children and selves, at a high price; as wine has been scarce for several years past; and it would seem that Nature had denied this liquor so long out of revenge against her enemies and the destroyers of the whole human race. You ought, therefore, most prudent fathers, not only to empty their vessels, by throwing this poison into your river; but to cast alive into the flames the sellers of this wine, and thus to punish poisoning as well as robbery.” – Pirkheimeri Opera, Franck. 1610, fol. p. 136. [This writer was the friend and contemporary of Albert Durer.]

743

De docimasia vini lithargyrio mangonisati. Tubingæ 1707.

744

De la Mare, Traité de la Police, i. 615.

745

William Graham’s Art of making Wines from Fruit, Flowers and Herbs. Sixth edit. London, 8vo.

746

[A solution of sulphuretted hydrogen answers much better.]

747

Anleitung zur Verbesserung der Weine in Teutschland, p. 32.

748

Lib. xiv. cap. 20.

749

[It acts by keeping the wine from contact with oxygen, which is essential to the acetic fermentation.]

750

This was done at Rothenburg on the Tauber in 1497. It was ordered that half an ounce of pure sulphur should be employed for a cask containing a tun of wine; and that when wine had been once exposed to the vapour of sulphur, it should not undergo the same operation a second time.

751

In John Hornung’s Cista Medica, Norimbergæ 1625, there are two letters from German physicians (Libavius and Doldius) respecting this practice.

752

Geopon. p. 486, 502. – Lemnius de Miraculis Occultis Naturæ, Coloniæ, 1581, 8vo, p. 291.

753

See Haushaltungs-Recht, Leipsic, 1716, 4to, p. 1393.

754

Von Lersner, Chronica der Stadt Frankfurt, ii. p. 683. Wine seasoned with mustard, and which was sold as boiled wine, was forbidden at the same time. See p. 684. In the year 1484 wine mixed with the herb mugwort was prohibited also.

755

Anleitung, ut supra, p. 93, 128.

756

See Redding’s History and Description of Modern Wines.

757

It was because pearls are calcareous that Cleopatra was able to dissolve hers in vinegar, and by these means to gain a bet from her lover, as we are told by Pliny, 1. ix. c. 35, and Macrobius Saturn. 1. ii. c. 13. She must, however, have employed stronger vinegar than that which we use for our tables, as pearls, on account of their hardness and their natural enamel, cannot be easily dissolved by a weak acid. Nature has secured the teeth of animals against the effects of acids, by an enamel covering which answers the same purpose; but if this enamel happen to be injured only in one small place, the teeth soon spoil and rot. Cleopatra perhaps broke and pounded the pearls; and it is probable that she afterwards diluted the vinegar with water, that she might be able to drink it; though dissolved calcareous matter neutralizes acids and renders them imperceptible to the tongue. We are told that the dissipated Clodius gave to each of his guests a pearl dissolved in vinegar to drink: – “Ut experiretur in gloria palati,” says Pliny, “quid saperent margaritæ; atque ut mire placuere, ne solus hoc sciret, singulos uniones convivis absorbendos dedit.” Horace, lib. ii. sat. 3, says the same. That pearls are soluble in vinegar is remarked in Pausanias, b. viii. ch. 18, and Vitruvius, b. viii. ch. 3.

758

That pearls are not peculiar to one kind of shell-fish, as many believe, was known to Pliny. I have a number of very good pearls which were found by my brother in Colchester oysters. It is more worthy of remark, and less known, that real pearls are found under the shield of the sea-hare, (Aplysia), as has been observed by Bohadsch in his book De Animalibus Marinis, Dresdæ, 1761, 4to, p. 39.

759

In the time of Job, pearls were accounted to be of great value. Job, chap. xxviii. ver. 18.

760

[When the surface of pearl is examined with a microscope, it is found to be indented by a large number of delicate grooves, which by their effect upon the light give rise to the play of colours; and if impressions of them be taken upon wax, fusible metal, lead, balsam of Tolu, &c., the impressed surface exhibits the prismatic colours in the same manner as the pearl. This principle has been applied by Mr. Barton and others to the making of ornaments, in the form of buttons, artificial jewels, &c., by grooving the surface of steel with a very fine cutting machine. The theory of the production of the colours is this: the surfaces of the grooves, from their varied inclinations, reflect the incident white light at various angles, hence the correspondence of the luminous undulations is interrupted and some of them check or interfere with one another, others continue their course. Now, ordinary white light being a mixture of coloured rays, when some of these are checked or interfered with in their progress, the remainder continue their course and appear of that colour which results from the ocular impression communicated by them.]