LINE, n.s. LINEAGE, LIN'EAL, adj LINEALLY, adv. LINEAR, adj. LINEATION, n. s.

Fr. line; Lat. linea. The path of a mathematical point: extension longitudinally; limit: hence sketch; outline; marks or features of the hand or face; contour; an extended thread or string; family, ascending or descending; and, particularly, the equinoctial circle; a rank, or disposition, of soldiers; a trench, or work, in fortification; as much as is written, or printed, from margin to margin in a book or manuscript; a verse; a measure of extension, containing one-tenth of an inch lineage is race; progeny; family: lineal, containing or composed of lines; in direct descent; hereditary : lineally, in a direct line: lineal, composed of lines: lineation, lineal form; draught

of a line, or lines.

They pierce the broken foe's remotest lines. Id. The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it and can there be a thought so transporting, as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness!

Addison. When any thing is mathematically demonstrated weak, it is much more mechanically weak; errors ever occurring more easily in the management of gross materials than lineal designs. Wotton.

Where-ever it is freed from the sand stone, it is covered with linear striæ, tending towards several centers, so as to compose flat stellar figures.

Woodward on Fossils. There are in the horney ground two white lineations, with two of a pale red. Woodward.

Even the planets, upon this principle, must gravitate no more towards the sun; so that they would not revolve in the curve lines, but fly away in direct tangents, till they struck against other planets.

Bentley.

Oh lasting as those colours may they shine, Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line! Pope. In the preceding line, Ulysses speaks of Nausicaa, yet immediately changes the words into the masculine gender.

Broome.

There is a sort of masonry in poetry, wherein the pause represents the joints of building, which ought in every line and course to have their disposition

varied.

Shenstone.

To dote on aught may leave us, or be left, Is that ambition? then let flames descend, Point to the centre their inverted spires, And learn humiliation from a soul Which boasts her lineage from celestial fire.

Young.

A poet does not work by square or line, As smiths and joiners perfect a design; At least we moderns, our attention less, Beyond the' example of our sires digress, And claim a right to scamper and run wide, Wherever chance, caprice, or fancy guide.

Nor less amazed, that such a blot His noble 'scutcheon should have got, While he was highest of his line. LINE, v. a.

Cowper.

Byron.

From LINEN, which see; or LIN'ING, n. s. Lat. linum. To cover inside; to guard or protect within; place within; double; impregnate a lining is an inward covering or guard.

Her women are about her: what if I do line one of their hands? Shakspeare. Cymbeline.

Line and new repair our towns of war With men of courage, and with means defendant. Shakspeare.

Son of sixteen, Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire. Id.

Who lined himself with hope, Eating the air on promise of supply. The lining of his coffers shall make coats To deck our soldiers for these Irish wars.

Id.

Id.

LINE, EQUINOCTIAL. See ASTRONOMY. graduated upon scales, sectors, &c. It is also LINE, GUNTER's, a logarithmic line, usually called the line of lines, and line of numbers; being only the logarithms graduated upon a ruler, which therefore serves to solve problems instrumentally in the same manner as logarithms do arithmetically. It is usually divided into 100 parts, every tenth of which is numbered, beginning with 1 and ending with 10: so that if the first great division, marked 1, stand for one-tenth of an integer, the next division, marked 2, will stand for two-tenths, 3 for three-tenths, and so on; and the intermediate divisions will in like manner represent 100th parts of the same integer. If each of the great divisions represent ten integers, then will the less divisions stand for integers; and, if the greater divisions be supposed each 100, the subdivisions will be each ten. 1. To find the product of two numbers. From 1 extend the compasses to the multiplier; and the same extent, applied the same way from the multiplicand, will reach to the product. Thus, if the product of 4 and 8 be required, extend the compasses from 1 to 4, and that extent laid from 8 the same way will reach to 32, their product. 2. To divide one number by another. The extent from the divisor to unity will reach from the dividend to the quotient: thus, to divide 36 by 4, extend the compasses from 4 to 1, and the same extent will reach from 36 to 9, the quotient sought. 3. To three given numbers to find a fourth proportional. Suppose the numbers 6, 8, 9: extend the compasses from 6 to 8; and this extent, laid from 9 the same way, will reach to 12, the fourth proportional required. 4. To find a mean proportional between any two given numbers. Suppose 8 and 32: extend the compasses from 8, in the left-hand part of the line, to 32 in the right; then, bisecting this distance, its half will reach from 8 forward, or from 32 backward, to 16, the mean proportional sought. 5. To extract the square root of any number. Suppose 25: bisect the distance between 1 on the scale and the point representing 25; then the half of this distance, set off from 1, will give the point representing the root 5. In

the same manner the cube root, or that of any higher power, may be found by dividing the distance on the line between 1 and the given number into as many equal parts as the index of the power expresses; then one of those parts, set from 1, will find the point representing the root required.

LINE, MERIDIAN. See GEOGRAPHY.

LINE OF BATTLE is the disposition of the fleet in the day of engagement, on which occasion the vessels are usually drawn up as much as possible in a straight line, to gain and keep the advantage of the wind and to run the same board. See NAVAL TACTICS.

LINE, SHIP OF THE, a vessel large enough to be drawn up in the line, and to have a place in a sea-fight.

LINEA ALBA, in anatomy, the concourse of the tendons of the oblique and transverse muscles of the abdomen; dividing the abdomen in two in the middle. It is called linea, line, as being straight; and alba, from its color, which is white.

LINEAMENT, n. s. Fr. lineament; Lat. lineamentum. From LINE, which see. Feature; discriminating mark.

Noble York

In all his lineaments, though in his face
The glimpses of his father's glory shine.

Milton. God our parent hath stamped on our nature some lineaments of himself, whereby we resemble him. Barrow.

There are not more differences in men's faces, and the outward lineaments of their bodies, than there are in the makes and tempers of their minds; only there is this difference, that the distinguishing characters of the face, and the lineaments of the body, grow more plain with time, but the peculiar physiognomy of the mind is most discernible in children.

Locke.

I may advance religion and morals, by tracing some few lineaments in the character of a lady, who hath spent all her life in the practice of both. Swift.

These are the moral attributes of the Divine Being, in which he requires us to imitate him; the express lineaments of the divine nature, in which all good men bear a resemblance to him; and for the sake of which only they are the objects of his delight. Mason. LIN'EN, n. s. & adj. Sax. linen; Goth LIN'ENER. Slin; Teut. lein, flax; Lat. linum; Gr. Avov. Cloth of hemp or flax. And thei tooken the bodi of Jhesus and bounden it in lynnun clothis with swete smellynge oynementis, as it is the custom to iewis for to byrie.

Wiclif. Jon. xx. Here is a basket, he may creep in, throw foul linen upon him, as if going to bucking. Shakspeare. A linen stock on one leg, and a kersey boot hose on the other, gartered with a red and blue list. Id. Death of thy soul! those linen cheeks of thine Are counsellors to fear. What soldiers, whey-face?

Id.

LINEN. The fabrication of linen is a most important branch of the staple manufactures of Great Britain. On this account we have already fully examined the agricultural processes connected with the cultivation of flax; the dressing of hemp has also been briefly considered, and we must now proceed to the operation of spinning.

The most ancient mode of spinning is by the spindle and distaff, and this method is the simplest of all others. The spindle is nothing more than a piece of hard wood, made round, and sharp pointed at one end, so that it can be made to whirl upon its point in the same manner as a child's top: the upper part is reduced to a pin or peg, and it is this part which has the fibres united to it, the lower or enlarged part being only to give sufficient weight to make it revolve. The spinner must be seated upon the ground, and after having put the distaff in motion upon its point, by twirling it between the hands, get it up to a rapid motion by striking it occasionally with the hand, with a motion very similar to that by which a child keeps up the motion of his whipping-top, when he draws the lash of a whip round it.

The flax, after having been properly prepared, is lapped round the end of the distaff, which is nothing more than a stick that the spinner holds in his left hand, so as to be conveniently situated to draw off from it a few fibres at a time with the finger and thumb of the right hand, to form the thread. The upper part of the spindle, which is made smaller like a pin, has the ends of the fibres which are to form the thread attached to it before it is put in motion. These fibres are drawn out of the bunch which is wound upon the distaff, and held between the finger and thumb, so as to be in the direction of the length of the spindle; therefore, when the spindle is once made to revolve, it twists these fibres together, to form a thread, and, as fast as the thread forms, the spinner draws off more flax from the distaff, and guides the fibres between the finger and thumb, so that they shall be regularly delivered out, and make an even thread. The motion of the spindle is constantly kept up, by striking it as often as the hand can be spared from the operation of guiding the thread. When by these means as great a length of thread is formed as is convenient to reach from the end of it to the spindle, the thread is wound upon the outside of the small part or pin of the spindle, for which purpose the spinner applies the fore-finger against the thread, close to the end of the spindle, and bends the thread at that

wheel, as it touches it at one part, and at the opposite side of the ring projects nearly three-quarters of an inch. This ring of wire gives motion to an upright lever, about fifteen inches long and moving on a centre at three inches from its lower extremity, where it has a pin fixed in it and resting against the oblique ring of wire; therefore, when the wheel turns round, it communicates a small motion to the lever in consequence of its obliquity to the plane in which it revolves. The upper end of the lever is connected to an horizontal sliding-bar situated beneath the spindle, and having an upright piece of brass, which works in the notch of a pully formed in the ends of the bobbin, and drives the bobbin backwards and forwards upon the spindle, according as the oblique ring of wire forces the pin at the lower end of the lever in or out, when the wheel moves round. To regulate and return this alternate motion, a small weight hangs by a line to the sliding-bar, and, passing over a pulley, rises and falls as the bobbin recedes and advances, and tends constantly to keep the pin at the lower end of the lever in contact with the wire. It is evident from this description, that one staple only is wanted to the arms of the flyer, which being placed near the extremity, the thread passes through it, and by the motion of the bobbin is laid regularly upon it from one end to the other. The invention has also another advantage over the old method, which always winds the thread in ridges upon the bobbin; and, if the thread breaks in reeling the yarn, the whole bobbin may as well be thrown away, because the thread cannot easily be found again; but this improved wheel always winds the threads across upon one another, by which means the end can never be lost.

In order to regulate the friction on the bobbin, and retard its motion in a greater or less degree at pleasure, there is a neck of brass or steel fastened to one end of it, and embraced by a kind of small vice, or pincers, fixed to the sliding-bar. This vice must be made either with two elastic springs with wooden tops, or of wood wholly, and faced with leather; but, if made of wood only, then a spring must be made beneath the shoulder of the screw, to answer the same purpose. By tightening this screw, more or less, the friction on the bobbin may be regulated to the greatest nicety, provided the springs are of a strength rightly proportioned to their functions. It will readily appear, that all this may be done without the least effect on the velocity of the whole machine, as thereby nothing is added to the general friction so as to obstruct it.

We shall now proceed to give a description of a patent, obtained in 1806, by Messrs. Clarke and Bugby, for effecting certain improvements in a machine, intended to be worked by handlabor, for the spinning of hemp, flax, &c. :

Plate LINEN MANUFACTURE, fig. 1, represents an oblique view of the front of a frame containing ten spindles (but the frames may contain an indefinite number of spindles). A, the spindle or a bow passing through the whole frame, having ten bosses of brass or cast-iron thereon, each about four inches diameter, each boss supplying one spindle; B, a pinion of twelve leaves

upon the end of the spindle A, connected with the wheel C, of eighty teeth, fixed upon the end of a small iron spindle F, covered with wood, and extending through the whole frame; D, a slack or intermediate pinion of any size at discretion, connected with another similar pinion, the latter connected with a wheel of 120 teeth, which is fixed upon an iron spindle G, of about an inch and a half in diameter, and extending through the whole frame; but the wheels B, C, D, and E, may be varied in their numbers, to increase or diminish the draught of the substance operated upon, as may best suit its quality or the ideas of the workman. The pinion B is so contrived as to slip off the end of the spindle A, to make room for a smaller or larger one; by means whereof a larger or shorter thread may be spun from the same sized rovings; a aa aa a a a a a represent ten roved slivers of hemp, flax, tow, or wool, passing between the iron spindle G and rollers in pairs pressed against them by springs or weights; these springs or weights must operate with sufficient force to hold back the slivers or rovings so securely, that they may only pass on with the movement of the spindle; these pairs of pressing rollers are placed behind the spindle. The use of the small iron spindle F, covered with wood, and left rather larger than the spindle G, is, with pressure of the small wood-roller, made up in pairs bbbbb, and so contrived that each pair may roll upon two slivers, to bring them down straight, and preserve the twist which they receive in the roving-machine till the slivers leave them. The bosses on the spindle A, have likewise wooden rollers in pairs pressed against them by springs or weights, between which the drawn, lengthened, or extended slivers pass to the spindle, the rollers having each a tin conductor, cccccccccc, to bring the material under operation as centrically as possible between the wood-rollers and the bosses; but all the above-mentioned parts of the machine are so similar to the common upright frames, that a person conversant with them will not be at a loss to understand its arrangement. H, is a wheel of wood four feet in diameter, having its rim about two inches thick, with a groove in its periphery for a small cord or band. In its centre is a rule or stock of wood, through which the spindle I passes, and extends into its frame about one-fourth of its length. To enable the person that turns the winch to reach all the spindles at work, with the hand that is not engaged in turning, to remove any obstacle that may arise to the spindles, the arbor or spindle of the wheel I has its bearing on the sides of the frame that contains it, marked LLLL; this frame, with the wheel H, the arbor I, and the winch K, is similar to that part of a machine called a mule-jenny, used for spinning cotton; this frame is supported in a horizontal position at the outer end by two legs marked M M, and a screw-pin which passes through K, the front upright a A, fig. 2, and made tight with the thumb-screw a; the screw passes through a groove or mortise at the end of the wheel frame, to enable the workman to adjust the wheels N and O, as it will be found necessary to change the wheel N, to make such alteration in the twist as the size of the yarn may