Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/416

 Pollux and some others call it), i. e. cotton, to be intended. His conjecture seems probable. The remark of Isidore intimates, that in his time it had already been a matter of dispute whether Byssus was a kind of flax or something else.

XIII. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, testifies to the great strength of the threads of Byssus.

Cloth made of Byssus indicates firm faith: For threads of Byssus, it is said, surpass E'en ropes of broom in firmness and in strength.

''Ad Cytherium in Max. Biblioth. Patrum, vol.'' vi. p. 264.

Vossius also quotes the authority of Jerome and Eucherius to prove the great tenacity of Byssus. But, if Byssus were cotton, it certainly would not have been celebrated on that account.

The arguments of Dr. J. R. Forster on the other side of the question will now be considered. See his Liber Singularis de Bysso Antiquorum, Lon. 1776, p. 11. 50.

I. His first argument is as follows. Julius Pollux says (l. vii. c. 17.), that was "a kind of flax among the Indians." The Jewish rabbis indeed all explain the Hebrew (Shesh), which in the Septuagint is always translated, as signifying flax. But they use the term for flax in so loose and general a way, that they may very properly be supposed to have included cotton under it. In the same general sense we must suppose to be used by Julius Pollux; and it is clear, that he must have meant cotton, because cotton grows abundantly in India, whereas flax was never known to grow in India at all.

In proof of this last assertion Forster refers to Osbeck's Journal, vol i. p. 383. He also appeals to a passage of Philostratus (Vita Apollonii, l. ii. c. 20. p. 70, 71.), which has been quoted in Part Third, p. 328., where that author certainly applies the term in question to the cotton of India.

An answer to this argument, so far as it depends on the testimony of Julius Pollux, was furnished by Olaus Celsius in his Hierobotanicon, published in 1747, a work which Forster had better have consulted, when he was writing a treatise expressly