This great industry grew up at the summary closing of the woollen mills, prospered, and, if at first it did not take the place entirely of the woollen industry, it did so finally.

In the mid-nineteenth century it has already reached huge proportions, and, while to-day the public undoubtedly buys a great deal that is not linen in the expectation that it is linen, and a great deal of linen that is not Irish linen in the hope or the belief that it is Irish linen, there is no question but that the trade has already advanced beyond the point where it was when it stood alone and supreme in the world.

The trade has reached its present magnitude from the very small beginnings of a Huguenot refugee named Crommelin, who settled originally at Lisburn.

The superiority of Irish linen is due primarily to the bleaching, which, of itself, depends upon the water and atmosphere, which at Belfast and the other places mentioned is apparently not equalled elsewhere in the world.

To get the same results, it is said that a certain German manufacturer buys Irish yarn, that is, linen spun in Ireland, weaves it

into cloth in Bohemia, sends it back to Belfast to be bleached, finally brings it back to his establishment in Germany, and sells it aswhat?

The most varied and most successful cottage industries are at Limerick, Carrickmacross, Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, Crosshaven, Ardora, and Clones. Their specialty is lace of a delicate and elegant variety.

The cottage woollens are mostly made in Donegal and Connemara, while the art of embroidery is followed most extensively at Belfast, Dublin, Dalkey, Garryhill, Sligo, Strabane, and Ballintra.

There is one phase of trade that the Irish have neglected to develop of late, the fisheries. More or less philosophically, as they think, they lay this to the Scotch, who are much more successful at the industry than themselves. This is not the fault of the Scotch; it is the folly of the Irish. At any rate, there is an inexhaustible supply of mackerel, herring, cod, hake, sole, turbot, lobsters, and even oysters to be found on the south and southwest coast of Ireland.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this