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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 are flat, limber, softer, and less transparent, and in twisting into a thread they joyn, and lie so close together, as to lose their own, and destroy each others particular reflections.  There seems therefore three Particulars very requisite to make the so drest Flax appear Silk also when spun into threads.  First, that the substance of it should be made more clear and transparent, Flax retaining in it a kind of opacating brown, or yellow; and the