These threads that compose this fine contexture, though they are as small
as those that constitute the finer sorts of Silks, have notwithstanding
nothing of their glossie, pleasant, and lively reflection. Nay, I have been
informed both by the Inventor himself, and several other eye-witnesses,
that though the flax, out of which it is made, has been (by a singular art,
of that excellent Person, and Noble Vertuoso, M. _Charls Howard_, brother
to the _Duke of Norfolk_) so curiously dress'd and prepar'd, as to appear
both to the eye and the touch, full as _fine_ and as _glossie_, and to
receive all kinds of colours, as well as Sleave-Silk; yet when this Silken
Flax is twisted into threads, it quite loseth its former luster, and
becomes as plain and base a thread to look on, as one of the same bigness,
made of common Flax.

The reason of which odd _Phenomenon_ seems no other then this; that though
the curiously drest Flax has its parts so exceedingly small, as to
equallize, if not to be much smaller then the clew of the Silk-worm,
especially in thinness, yet the differences between the figures of the
constituting filaments are so great, and their substances so various, that
whereas those of the _Silk_ are _small_, _round_, _hard_, _transparent,_
and to their bigness proportionably _stiff_, so as each filament preserves
its proper _Figure_, and consequently its vivid _reflection_ intire, though
twisted into a thread, if not too hard; those of Flax are _flat_, _limber_,
_softer,_ and _less transparent_, and in twisting into a thread they joyn,
and lie so close together, as to lose their own, and destroy each others
particular reflections. There seems therefore three Particulars very
requisite to make the so drest Flax appear Silk also when spun into
threads. First, that the substance of it should be made more _clear_ and
_transparent_, Flax retaining in it a kind of opacating brown, or yellow;
and the parts of the whitest kind I have yet observ'd with the _Microscope_
appearing white, like flaw'd Horn or Glass, rather then clear, like clear