Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/415

 of veneration," says he, "I unfolded every day this venerable linen, which had been woven more than 1700 years." (Voyage à Meroe et au Fleuve Blanc.)

IX. According to Josephus the Jewish priests wore drawers of spun flax, and over the drawers a shirt. He calls a garment made of [Greek: Byssos] a linen garment. It had ''flowers woven into it, which were of three different substances''. He soon after mentions the same materials ''as used for making the curtains of the tabernacle''. In all these instances the figures or ornaments were of splendid colors upon a ground of white linen. We have no reason to believe, that either the Egyptians or the Israelites in the time of Moses knew anything of cotton: so that, if Josephus gives a true account, [Greek: Byssos] must have denoted a kind of flax.

X. Jerome on Ezekiel xxvii. says, "Byssus grows principally in Egypt" (Byssus in Ægypto quàm maximè nascitur). Of the celebrity of the Egyptian flax we have the most abundant proofs; but, if by Byssus Jerome meant cotton, he here committed a strange mistake; for, supposing cotton to have grown at all in Egypt, it certainly grew far more abundantly in other countries, and of this fact he could scarcely be ignorant.

XI. Martianus Capella plainly distinguishes between that substance and Byssus. He seems to have considered cotton as an Indian, Byssus as an Egyptian product. He certainly supposed, that they were not the same thing.

XII. Isidorus Hispalensis expressly states, that Byssus was a kind of flax, very white and soft.

Byssus genus est quoddam lini nimium candidi et mollissimi, quod Græci papatem vocant.—''Orig. l.'' xix. 27.

Byssina (vestis) candida, confecta ex quodam genere lini grossioris Sunt et qui genus quoddam lini byssum esse existiment.—''Ibid. c.'' 22.

Forster conjectures (p. 4.) that for genus quoddam lini we should read genus quoddam lanæ, and conceives tree-wool (as