272 ON ANIMAL COTTON, OR THE INSECT FLY-CARRIER. 



If it fliould want any preparation, it could be only in cafe 

 it fliould not have been fufficiently guarded againft duft and 

 rain. 



Vegetable cotton, befides the feeds that produce it and with 

 which it is charged, is filled with extraneous matter, of which 

 it cannot be freed, but with a minute attention, many hands 

 and much time, or with the help of machines which have not 

 yet been brought to perfection. 



In every point of view, animal cotton appears to me to have 

 a great fuperiority over that of the vegetable kind. 



It will, perhaps, be wondered at, that experience has not 

 long ago afcertained this fa6t, but let it be confidered that the 

 filk-worm and its ufe, were known long before any ufe was 

 made of them, and that we are now carefully repairing the 

 lofTes that we have fuffered by the carelefs indifference of our 

 fore-fathers. 



The fly-carrier may experience the fame fate, becaufe it is 

 lefs difficult to reafon than to make experiments, but I dare 

 hope that as foon as it (hall have prevailed over the fophiftry 

 of indolence, it will ftand the competition with filk and vege- 

 table cotton. It is more abundant than either. It requires 

 lefs time and lefs trouble to procure it. 

 This cotton I have but one word more to add. Silk and vegetable 



makes good lint, cotton ferve only to envenom and inflame wounds, which is 

 attributed to the afperities of their filaments ; I have frequently 

 employed animal cotton as lint in the hofpital of my planta- 

 tion, it has always fupplied the want of that made of flaxen 

 linen, and I have not obferved the fmalleft inconvenience to 

 arife from the ufe that I have made of it. 



Had it not been for the troubles that have laid our colony 

 wafte, and which have prevented the neceflary communica- 

 tion, I fliould have brought to you a fly-carrier in every one 

 of the periods of his life. You would have feen the eggs, 

 the magnificent robe with which he is decked at his birth, 

 the kind of food that he is fond of, the fimple but noble veft- 

 ment in which he wraps himfelf up on the approach of his 

 tormentors, you would have feen thofe covering his whole 

 body as it were with points, you would have feen him co- 

 vered with his thell, and that fame (hell carded, fpun and ready 

 for the weaver. I had in a great degree already executed this 

 defign. 



But 



