| Yarns produced: | £. | s. | d. | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Of average | 30 | leas | per lb. | per week | circa | 1050 | boles at 9s. | 472 | 10 | 0 | |||
| Of ditto | 100 | ditto | — | — | 1080 | — | 486 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Total weekly produce | 2130 | 958 | 10 | 0 | |||||||||
| £. | s. | d. | |||||||||||
| Weekly charges, wages, &c. | 150 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| Flax | 400 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| Weekly expenses | 40 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||||
| Interest on 60,000l. 10 per annum | 120 | 0 | 0 | 710 | 0 | 0 | |||||||
| Weekly profit | 248 | 10 | 0 | ||||||||||
Measures of flax yarn; and statistics of the linen trade for the United Kingdom.
| One lea of flax yarn at Leeds is | = | 300 | yards. | |||
| One spindle Scotch | = | 38 | leas | = | 11400 | yards. |
| One rand | = | 6 | ditto | = | 1800 | ditto. |
| One dozen is 12 rands | = | 72 | ditto | = | 21600 | ditto. |
When yarn is estimated in Nos. it implies the number of leas in one pound weight; as in cotton, it means the number of hanks of 840 yards each in one pound.
Imports of flax and tow, or codilla of hemp and flax, at a duty of 1d. per cwt., in
| 1834. | 1835. | 1837. | 1838. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| lbs. | lbs. | lbs. | lbs. | |
| 811,722 | 740,814 | 1,529,116 | 1,002,256 | |
| Retained for consumption. | ||||
| 794,272 | 728,143 | 1,532,059 | 1,002,408 | |
| Linen yarn exported | 2,611,215 | |||
| Linen manufactures exported, in- cluding flax yarn, declared value | £3,208,139 | £3,645,097 | £2,613,293 | |
FLINT. (Pierre à fusil, Fr; Feuerstein, Germ.) The fracture of this fossil is perfectly conchoidal, sometimes glossy, and sometimes dull on the surface. It is very hard, but breaks easily, and affords very sharp-edged splintery fragments; whence it is a stone which strikes most copious sparks with steel. It is feebly translucid, has so fine and homogeneous a texture as to bear polishing, but possesses little lustre. Its colours are very various, but never vivid. The blackish-brown flint is that usually found in the white chalk. It is nearly black and opaque, loses its colour in the fire, and becomes grayish-white, and perfectly opaque. Flints occur almost always in nodules or tubercular concretions of various and very irregular forms. These nodules, distributed in strata among the chalk, alongside of one another and almost in contact, form extensive beds; interrupted, indeed, by a multitude of void spaces, so as to present, if freed from the earthy matter in which they are imbedded, a species of network with meshes, very irregular both in form and dimension.
The nodules of silex, especially those found in the chalk, are not always homogeneous and solid. Sometimes there is remarked an organic form towards their centre, as a madrepore or a shell, which seems to have served as their nucleus; occasionally the centre is hollow, and its sides are studded over with crystals of quartz, carbonate of iron, pyrites, concretionary silex or calcedony, filled with pulverulent silica nearly pure, or silex mixed with sulphur; a very singular circumstance.
Flints are observed to be generally humid when broken immediately after being dug out of the ground; a property which disappears after a short exposure to the air. When dried they become more brittle and more splintery, and sometimes their surfaces get covered at old fractures with a thin film or crust of opaque silex.