Mr. John Duncan of Glasgow, the inventor of the tambouring machinery, was one of those unfortunate individuals who benefit their species without benefiting themselves, and who died in the meridian of life, the victim of poverty and of national ingratitude. He conceived the idea of bringing into action a great number of needles at the same time, in order to shorten the process by manual labour; but he at first was perplexed about the diversification of the pattern. This difficulty, however, he soon surmounted by employing two forces at right angles to each other, which gave him a new force in the direction of the diagonal of the parallelogram, whose sides were formed by the original forces. His first machine was very imperfect; but after two years’ study, he formed a company, at whose expense six improved machines were put in action, and who secured the invention by a patent. At this time the idea of rendering the machine automatic had scarcely occurred to him; but he afterwards succeeded in accomplishing this great object, and the tambouring machines were placed under the surveillance of a steam-engine. Another patent was taken for these improvements. The reader who desires to have a minute account of these improvements, and of the various parts of the machinery, will be amply gratified by perusing the inventor’s own account of the machinery in the article CHAINWORK in the Edinburgh Encyclopædia. At present it will be sufficient to state, that the muslin to be tamboured was suspended vertically in a frame, which was capable of being moved both in a vertical and a horizontal direction. Sixty or more needles lying horizontally occupied a frame in front of the muslin web. Each of these working needles, as they are called, was attended by a feeding-needle, which, by a circular motion round the working-needle, lodged upon the stem of the latter the loop of the thread. The sixty needles then penetrated the web, and, in order that they might return again without injuring the fabric, the barb or eye of the needle, which resembled the barb of a fishing-hook, was shut by a slider. The muslin web then took a new position by means of the machinery that gave it its horizontal and vertical motion, so that the sixty needles penetrated it, at their next movement, at another point of the figure or flower. This operation went on till sixty flowers were completed. The web was then slightly wound up, that the needles might be opposite that part of it on which they were to work another row of flowers.