of' the Sacred Writings. 78 



cotton of the Gossipium arboreum was of a bright and dazzling 

 whiteness. That of the Gossipium herbaceum was nothing in- 

 ferior. What the Bombax ceiba yielded, was yellowish ; but 

 if the cloth was not so attractive, it must have been owing to the 

 spinner or dyer. 



Salmasius, in his Plinian Exercitations, shews that the cotton- 

 plant is abundant in India; and perhaps those are mistaken 

 who think it indigenous in Egypt. Certainly there was a com- 

 mercial intercourse betwixt Egypt and India from the earliest 

 times ; and whether the cotton-plant was brought originally from 

 India to Egypt, or vice versa, it can grow in all warm climates. 



We agree with Dr Vincent * in thinking, that cotton has had 

 its name from a kind of fruit growing in Crete, called Cotonean 

 by Pliny, though, in the first instance, it may have come into 

 our language through the French. 



Pliny tells us, lib. xiii. cap. 14., that ''- Ethiopia produces some 

 remarkable trees which bear wool, the nature of which has been 

 mentioned in the description of Arabia and India ;^' and again, 

 lib. xii. cap. 10., the passage referred to by Dr Vincent, " They 

 bear pods as large as the cotone^ln apples, which burst as soon as 

 ripe, and disclose balls of wool, which are made into linen cloths 

 of great value ;" and still more expressly, lib. xix. cap. 1 ., " the 

 upper part of Egypt, lying towards Arabia, produces a shrub, 

 which some call Gossipium, many Xylon, and its wool Xylina^'' 



By this account, we see that Pliny confounds cotton with 

 linen, for want, no doubt, of a proper term to express it ; and 

 Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. 23., confounds it with silk, as some 

 think Virgil does in these two lines of the second Georgic. 



Quid nemora ^thiopum molli canentia lana ? 

 Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres ? 



though, in general, his natural history is wonderfully correct. 



We may therelbre, indeed, lay it down as an established fact, 

 that the Greeks and Romans, as well as the later Jews, often 

 call cotton, linen, silk, or wool, as well from imperfect know- 

 ledge, as from careless expression ; though often they add some 

 circumstance by which it can be distinguished from each of 

 these substances. 



The natural colour of cotton is white, and with this whiteness 



• Perip. Nearch. Prelim. Disq. 



