Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/404

 he had an opportunity of examining, even that of embalmed birds, was cotton.

Dr. Hadley, however, who wrote a few years after Rouelle (Phil. Transactions for 1764, vol. 54.), seems to adhere to the old opinion. He calls the cloth of the mummy, which he examined, "linen." He says, it was in fillets of different breadths, but the greater part 1-1/2 inches broad. "They were torn longitudinally; those few that had a selvage, having it on one side only."

But the opinion of Rouelle received a strong support from Dr. John Reinhold Forster, to whom it appeared at first almost incredible, although he afterwards supported it in the most decided manner. He determined to take the first opportunity of settling the question by the inspection of mummies, and examined those in the British Museum, accompanied by Dr. Solander. Both of these learned and acute inquirers were convinced, that the cloth was cotton, deriving this opinion from the inspection of all those specimens, which were sufficiently free from gum, paint, and resins, to enable them to judge. Larcher informs us, that he remarked the same thing in these mummies in 1752, when he was accompanied by Dr. Maty. It is to be observed, however, that neither Larcher, Rouelle, nor Forster mentions the criterion which he employed to distinguish linen from cotton. They probably formed their opinion only from its apparent softness, its want of lustre, or some other quality, which might belong to linen no less than to cotton, and which therefore could be no certain mark of distinction.

The opinion of Larcher, Rouelle, and Forster appears to have been generally adopted. In particular we find it embraced by Blumenbach, who in the Philosophical Transactions for 1794 speaks of the "cotton bandages" of two of the small mummies, which he opened in London. In his Beiträge (i. e. Contributions to Natural History, 2nd part, p. 73, Göttingen,