THE 
FIBROUS PLANTS OF INDIA 
FITTED FOR 
CORDAGE, CLOTHING, AND PAPER. 
THE combination of strength with flexibility makes many 
natural products so useful-to man, that they attract his 
attention even in the earliest states of society. The necessity 
of sometimes tying up cattle, tethering a horse, or towing a raft, 
would readily lead to the twisting together of strips of skins or 
the tough bark of trees, so that length might be obtained, 
while strength was not sacrificed. Many of the same sub- 
stances were early applied to the arts of platting and of mat- 
making; while the felting of wool was discovered at very 
remote periods in the northern parts of Asia. All these arts 
probably preceded the discovery of that of weaving, when textile 
fabrics, whether of wool or of vegetable fibre, came to be sub. 
stituted, as clothing for man, for the skins and furs of animals 
or the primitive matting of rushes. 
It has been very satisfactorily shown by Mr. Yates, in his 
‘Textrinum Antiquorum,’ that in ancient times the inhabi- 
tants of Europe and of Western Asia were enveloped in skins 
and furs, or garments of wool and of goat’s hair, while the 
Chinese were probably clothed in silk. Hemp was early 
employed for the same purpose by the Scythians. The Egyptian 
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