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 dated 1183, contains the first mention of Darlington as a borough, rated at £5, while half a mark was due from the dyers of cloth. The next account of the town is in Bishop Hatfield’s Survey (c. 1380), which states that “Ingelram Gentill and his partners hold the borough of Derlyngton with the profits of the mills and dye houses and other profits pertaining to the borough rendering yearly four score and thirteen pounds and six shillings.” Darlington possesses no early charter, but claimed its privileges as a borough by a prescriptive right. Until the 19th century it was governed by a bailiff appointed by the bishop. The mention of dyers in the Boldon Book and Hatfield’s Survey probably indicates the existence of woollen manufacture. Before the 19th century Darlington was noted for the manufacture of linen, worsted and flax, but it owes its modern importance to the opening of the railway between Darlington and Stockton on the 27th of September 1825. “Locomotive No. 1,” the first that ever ran on a public railway, stands in Bank Top station, a remarkable relic of the enterprise. As part of the palatinate of Durham, Darlington sent no members to parliament until 1862, when it was allowed to return one member. The fairs and markets in Darlington were formerly held by the bishop and were in existence as early as the 11th century. According to Leland, Darlington was in his time the best market town in the bishopric with the exception of Durham. In 1664 the bishop, finding that the inhabitants of the town had set up a market “in the season of the year unaccustomed,” i.e. from the fortnight before Christmas to Whit Monday, prohibited them from continuing it. The markets and fairs were finally in 1854 purchased by the local authority, and now belong to the corporation.

DARLINGTONIA (called after William Darlington, an American botanist), a Californian pitcher-plant, belonging to the order Sarraceniaceae. There is only one species, D. californica, which is found at 5000 ft. altitude on the Sierra Nevadas of California, growing in sphagnum-bogs along with sundews and rushes. The pitcher-like leaves form a cluster, and are 1 to 2 ft. high, slender, erect, and end in a rounded hooded top, from which hangs a blade shaped like a fish-tail which guards the entrance to the pitcher. Insects are attracted to the leaves by the bright colouring, especially of the upper part; entering they pass down the narrow funnel guided by downward pointing hairs which also prevent their ascent. They form a putrefying mass in the bottom of the pitcher, and the products of their decomposition are presumably absorbed by the leaf for food.

DARLY, MATTHIAS, 18th-century English caricaturist, designer and engraver. This extremely versatile artist not only issued political caricatures, but designed ceilings, chimney-pieces, mirror frames, girandoles, decorative panels and other mobiliary accessories, made many engravings for Thomas Chippendale, and sold his own productions over the counter. He was apparently an architect by profession. The first publication which can be attributed to him with certainty is a coloured caricature, “The Cricket Players of Europe” (1741). In 1754 he issued A new Book of Chinese Designs, which was intended to minister to the passing craze for furniture and household decorations in the Chinese style. It was in this year that he engraved many of the plates for the Director of Thomas Chippendale. He published from many addresses, most of them in the Strand or its immediate neighbourhood, and his shop was for a long period perhaps the most important of its kind in London. In his book Nollekens and his Times, J. T. Smith, writing of Richard Cosway, says:—“So ridiculously foppish did he become that Matth. Darly, the famous caricature print seller, introduced an etching of him in his window in the Strand as the ‘Macaroni Miniature Painter.’” Darly was for many years in partnership with a man named Edwards, and together they published many political prints, which were originally issued separately and collected annually into volumes under the title of Political and Satirical History. Darly was a member both of the Incorporated Society of Artists and the Free Society of Artists, forerunners of the Royal Academy, and to their exhibitions he contributed many architectural drawings, together with a profile etching of himself (1775). Upon one of these etchings, published from 39 Strand, he is described as “Professor of Ornament to the Academy of Great Britain.” Darly’s most important publication was The Ornamental Architect or Young Artists’ Instructor (1770–1771), a title which was changed in the edition of 1773 to A Compleat Body of Architecture, embellished with a great Variety of Ornaments. He also issued Sixty Vases by English, French and Italian Masters (1767). In addition to his immense mass of other productions Darly executed many book plates, illustrated various books and cabinet-makers’ catalogues, and gave lessons in etching. His skill as a caricaturist brought him into close personal relations with the politicians of his time, and in 1763 he was instrumental in saving John Wilkes, whose partisan he was, from death at the hands of James Dunn, who had determined to kill him. Darly, who described himself as “Liveryman and block maker,” issued his last caricature in October 1780, and as his shop, No. 39 Strand, was let to a new tenant in the following year, it is to be presumed that he had by that time died, or become incapable of further work. As a designer of furniture Darly travelled in a dozen years or so from the extremes of pseudo-Chinese affectation to classical severity of the type popularized by the brothers Adam.

DARMESTETER, JAMES (1849–1894), French author and antiquarian, was born of Jewish parents on the 28th of March 1849 at Château Salins, in Alsace. The family name had originated in their earlier home of Darmstadt. He was educated in Paris, where, under the guidance of Michel Bréal and Abel Bergaigne, he imbibed a love for Oriental studies, to which for a time he entirely devoted himself. He was a man of vast intellectual range. In 1875 he published a thesis on the mythology of the Zend Avesta, and in 1877 became teacher of Zend at the École des Hautes Études. He followed up his researches with his Études iraniennes (1883), and ten years later published a complete translation of the Zend Avesta, with historical and philological commentary (3 vols., 1892–1893), in the Annales du musée Guimet. He also edited the Zend Avesta for Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East. Darmesteter regarded the extant texts as far more recent than was commonly believed, placing the earliest in the 1st century, and the bulk in the 3rd century In 1885 he was appointed professor in the Collège de France, and was sent to India in 1886 on a mission to collect the popular songs of the Afghans, a translation of which, with a valuable essay on the Afghan language and literature, he published on his return. His impressions of English dominion in India