4-06 ORIGIN OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. 



Parlatore attributed to G. arborewm some Asiatic 

 specimens of G. herbacewni, and a plant but little known 

 which Forskal found in Arabia. He suspected from this 

 that the ancients had known G. arboreum as well as G. 

 herhaceuon. Now that the two species are better distin- 

 guished, and that the origin of both is known, this does 

 not seem probable. They knew the herbaceous cotton 

 tlirough India and Persia, while the tree-cotton can only- 

 have come to them through Egypt. Parlatore himself 

 has given a most interesting proof of this. Until his 

 work appeared in 1866, it was not certain to what species 

 belonged some seeds of the cotton plant which Rosellini 

 found in a vase among the monuments of ancient Thebes.^ 

 These seeds are in the Florence museum. Parlatore 

 examined them carefully, and declares them to belong to 

 Gossypium arboreum?' Rosellini is certain he was not 

 imposed upon, as he was the first to open both the tomb 

 and the vase. No archaeologist has since seen or read 

 signs of the cotton plant in the ancient times of Egyptian 

 civilization. How is it that a plant so striking, remark- 

 able for its flowers and seed, was not described nor pre- 

 served habitually in the tombs if it were cultivated ? 

 How is it that Herodotus, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus 

 made no mention of it when writing of Egypt ? The 

 cloths in which all the mummies are wrapt, and which 

 were formerly supposed to be cotton, are always linen 

 according to Thompson and many other observers who 

 are familiar with the use of the microscope. Hence I 

 conclude that if the seeds found by Rosellini were really 

 ancient they were a rarity, an exception to the common 

 custom, perhaps the product of a tree cultivated in a 

 garden, or perhaps they came from Upper Egypt, a 

 country where we know the tree-cotton to be wild. 

 Pliny ^ does not say that cotton was cultivated in Lower 

 Egypt ; but here is a translation of his very remarkable 

 passage, which is often quoted. "The upper part of 

 Egypt, towards Arabia, produces a shrub which some 



' Pn'^ellini, Momimenti dell' Egizia, p. 2j Mon. Civ., i. p. 60. 

 ^ Parlatore, Specie del Cotoni, p. 16. 

 3 Pliny, Hist. Plant., lib. xix. cap. 1. 



