proper season, with a pretty delicate blue flower, succeeded by a seed-pod; from the bright slippery seeds contained in these pods linseed oil is obtained by pressure, so that the plant is useful in various ways, as is also the hemp; but it is only in so far as they relate to the rigging and service of a ship that we have now to do with them.

Our largest supplies of both hemp and flax have hitherto come from Russia, that country sending more than two-thirds of the whole quantity imported, which is considerably more than one million of hundred-weights in a year; Prussia, Holland, and Belgium furnish the rest, with the exception of a small quantity from France, and, latterly, from Egypt. Within the last few years flax cultivation has been attempted in Ireland, with considerable success; so that we may soon hope to supply sails and cordage to our merchant and other ships, made from home produce.

We cannot here describe the process of preparing hemp and flax for the spinner and weaver. The tow and the yarn, as they are called, are the fibrous or stringy portions of the stalk, which are separated from the woody parts by soaking in water, and afterwards beating, and what is

called scutching. The conversion of the hemp into rope, and the flax into the fine string or the thread of which canvas is woven, is accomplished by machinery, whose construction and operations we hope to describe in future books devoted to the several branches of English manufactures. We will now consider that the sails are being shaped and prepared in the sailloft, and the cables and smaller ropes in the rope house or ground, and proceed with our talk about ships.

It was not until the reign of Alfred the Great that the history of the British navy commenced, nor until that of Henry the Eighth that this nation took a prominent place as a maritime power. The vessels which Alfred built and equipped to oppose his northern invaders were, no doubt, superior in size and style of construction to any which had before been launched from these shores; yet were. they mere tubs in comparison with what we should now call a respectable trading vessel. Even in the time of Richard the Second the war ships, of which we have representations, were the queerest and most clumsy-looking affairs conceivable; almost as broad as long, shaped something like a foot-bath, no deck; a

single stout mast, with a square thing like a lantern, which perhaps it was, on the top, kept in its place by eight thick ropes, four on each side; this was all the rigging; there was a single sail, very loose, fastened, at the bottom, to each side of the ship, and at the top to a cross yard, that, it seemed, could not be pulled above half-way up the mast, and was as likely to drop down as to keep in its position. It was in such a ship as this that Richard the Lion-hearted set sail for the Holy Land, leading the first fleet that ever left these shores on a foreign expedition. It was with five hundred such that King John fought, and won, the first naval battle between England and France; many of these were, no doubt, merchant vessels, seized and appropriated to the national service, or hired for the occasion. That this was no uncommon practice in early times we may learn from the recorded fact, that in 1253 Henry the Third ordered all the vessels in the country to be employed in an expedition against the rebels of Gascony: the fleet altogether amounted, we are told, to above a thousand ships, three hundred being of large size. So again in 1346, when Edward the Third laid siege to Calais, there were thirty-seven ships belonging to the king,

thirty-seven foreign ships, one from Ireland, and 710 from the British ports, which were bound to furnish so many for the king's wars. It was in the reign of Edward the First (1297), that the first English admiral was appointed— his name was Roger de Leyburn; and in that of the third Edward, above alluded to, that we have the earliest mention of the use of the bowsprit, although in many of the ancient galleys, as well as the more modern ships of war, there appears to have been a projection at the prow, frequently with a pointed spear-like head, as if it were intended to do mischief to any object against which it might be forcibly driven; this head was usually carved into the representation of some bird or animal. Sometimes the prow of the vessel went straight up, half as high as the mast, like a neck, on the top of which the head was seated. The sides of the prow of an ancient ship were called the cheeks; they were frequently adorned with paint and gilding, the whole front sometimes forming a rude representation of a human face, with a preposterously long and ugly nose. That part of the vessel which divided the water was termed the goose, from its supposed resemblance to the

breast of a swimming bird; we now call it the cutwater.

What may properly be called the first ship of the British navy was built by Henry the Seventh, in 1488, at a cost of £14,000; it had three masts, and stood very high out of the water; it was accidentally destroyed by fire at Woolwich, in 1553. We have no record of the number of guns carried by this ship, nor of what is called her tonnage; the meaning of which term we shall presently explain.

The next large ship of which we read is the Henri grâce à Dieu-that is, Henry by the grace of God; it was built in 1515, at Erith, on the Kentish shore of the river Thames, between London and Gravesend. There is a picture of this ship in the Painted Hall, at Greenwich Hospital; it had four masts, and two full battery decks, with a shorter one at the head, which was raised very high, and most likely originated the term forecastle, still applied to that part of a ship of war in advance of the foremast. This ship carried eighty guns, of various sizes, and measured about 1000 tons burden. In 1552 the name was changed to "The Edward;" how long she was in existence after that date there is no record to prove,