The various methods and processes used in the manufacture of linen are well illustrated in the Egyptian paintings and bas-reliefs, such as the beating of the flax, combing, spinning, and weaving in the loom. Some of the Egyptian linen was exceedingly fine in texture and perfect in workmanship: a piece of linen found at Memphis had 540 threads to the inch in the warp. Linen yarn and the raw flax were exported from Egypt by the Phœnicians and Carthaginians to Greece, Italy, Germany, Spain, and probably to the British Isles. The Greek women wove linen for their garments, as the women of most European countries have done in the ancient and Middle Ages. Germany, Holland, and Belgium have from early times been the chief countries for linen manufacture in Europe. Perhaps at the present day the city of Belfast in Ireland is the most important seat of linen industry in the world, and Dundee in Scotland might claim the second place. For the last two hundred years the linen trade of Ulster has been in a flourishing condition. The English Parliament from the days of William III. to the present time have encouraged and promoted the trade, but the initial success of this industry was owing in a great measure to the skill and energy of Louis Crommelin and the Huguenot colony, who came to the North of Ireland from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and in the year 1699 finally settled at Lisburn, near Belfast. A similar colony of French Protestants, who were weavers by trade, settled in Scotland in 1727 under their leader, Nicholas d’Assaville. A great epoch in the history of weaving dates from the time of the invention of the Jacquard machine, which caused a revolution in nearly all branches of weaving. Jean-Marie Jacquard (1752-1834), the inventor of this machine, was a native of Lyons and a silk weaver by trade. The Jacquard machine is attached to any ordinary loom, and its work consists in mechanically selecting and raising the warp threads, when the shuttle passes across the loom, the action being regulated by means of cards with pierced holes through which the lifting cords or needles pass, the holes in the cards being arranged or cut in accordance with the preconceived pattern that ultimately figures in the woven cloth. The first Jacquard machine used in England was set up in Coventry in the year 1820. Silk and its manufacture by the Chinese was known and understood from a period anterior to the date of 2700 years before the Christian Era.