Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/368



There are also Byssina; and Byssus, a kind of flax. But among the Indians, and now also among the Egyptians, a sort of wool is obtained from a tree. The cloth made from this wool may be compared to linen, except that it is thicker. The tree produces a fruit most nearly resembling a walnut, but three-cleft. After the outer covering, which is like a walnut, has divided and become dry, the substance resembling wool is extracted and is used in the manufacture of cloth for woof, the warp being linen.

The description here given of the Cotton Tree or Cotton Plant, whichever was meant, is remarkably correct; indeed more correct than any account obtained since the time of the expedition of Alexander. The circumstance of the pericarp being three-cleft is agreeable to the fact, and is not noticed by any earlier writer. The comparison of it to a walnut in regard to size and form is also accurate. From this account, and from those of Theophrastus, Aristobulus, and Nearchus, we gather the following particulars, which are agreeable to the fact: that the cotton-plants are set in the plains, and in rows like vines; that the plant is three or four feet high, and is branched, spreading, and flexible, like a dog-rose; that the leaf is palmated like that of the vine; that the capsule is three-valved, about the size of a walnut, and, when it bursts, emits the cotton, resembling flocks of wool, in which the seeds are imbedded.

On the other hand, we have had no previous evidence respecting the use of cotton in the manufacture of cloth ''for the woof only'', and it is doubtful whether this piece of information is correct, ''because we have no reason to suppose that cotton was used for weaving in any country in which flax was also spun and woven''.

Tertullian in the third Chapter of his treatise De Pallio, enumerates nearly all the raw materials which were spun for weaving. He mentions the class of vegetable substances (cotton and flax) in the following terms:

Et arbusta vestiunt, et lini herbida post virorem lavacro nivescunt.

Both thickets supply clothing; and crops of flax, after being green, are rendered by washing white as snow.

Philostratus, who wrote in the third century, makes distinct mention of cotton in two passages.