Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/242

 still used the term Spartus in its original acceptation, viz. to denote the Spartium Junceum of Linnæus.

When the Stipa Tenacissima was brought into use for making ropes and for other purposes, for which the Spanish Broom was employed, the name of the latter would naturally be extended to the former, and we may thus account for the fact that the Stipa Tenacissima is now universally known in Spain by the name Esparto. Indeed it is possible, that the employment of the Stipa Tenacissima for these purposes may have been as ancient as the time of Pliny; and his use of the word "herba" in describing it, as well as the locality which he assigns to it, the hilly country about Carthage, favors the common interpretation, and perhaps even authorizes the conclusion, that his account is the result of confounding the two plants together, so that he says of one supposed plant things, which were partly true of both, and partly applicable either to the Spanish Broom, or to the Stipa Tenacissima only. But, even if this be admitted, it is still possible that the plant, from whose fibres the "pastorum vestis" was manufactured, was not the grassy Stipa, but the shrub, the Spanish Broom.

In order to establish this point we now proceed to mention the evidence respecting the application of it to such uses. It has been employed for making cloth in Turkey, in Italy, and the South of France, but in circumstances, which were either specially favorable to the manufacture, or where flax could not be cultivated. It is manufactured into shirts in Albania according to Dr. Sibthorp. Nearly a century ago, Pope Benedict XIV. brought a colony of Albanians to inhabit a barren and desolate portion of his territory on the sea-coast. Here they obtained a very fine, strong, durable thread from the Broom and the Nettle, and used it, when woven, in place of linen. Trombelli, who relates this fact, also gives an account of the manufacture of broom-bark in the vicinity of Lucca, where the hills, called Monte Cascia, are covered with this plant. "Formerly," he*