Extracts from Barrow's Travels in China. 



The manufacture of silks in China has been established 

 from a period so remote as not to be ascertained by anj 

 history. The time, however, when cotton was first brought 

 from the north of India into China , is noticed in their 

 annals. 



The Nankin cotton is supposed to be naturally of that 

 colour, it having been frequently raised at the Cape of Good 

 Hope, as an experiment, and the pods were always found 

 to be of a buff or Nankin colour. But of all the mechani- 

 cal arts, the carving of ivory has attained the greatest degree 

 of perfection. In this branch they stand unrivalled : even 

 at Birmingham, where 1 understand it has been attempted 

 by a machine, to cut fans in imitation of the Chinese, but 

 the experiment has not produced any articles at all equal 

 to the other. Nothing can be more exquisitely beautiful 

 than the fine open work displayed in a Chinese fan, the 

 sticks of which it seems are cut singly by the hand, as a 

 shield with the arms, or a cypher may be finished on the 

 article at the shortest notice, and close to the drawing. From 

 a solid ball of ivory with a hole in it not larger than half 

 an inch across, they will cut from nine to fifteen distinct 

 hollow globes, one within another all loosely moving, and 

 capable of being turned round within, in all directions, and 

 each of them carved full of open work. xModels of temples, 

 pagodas, and other pieces of architecture, are beautifully 

 worked in ivory, in short all toys are executed in a neater 

 manner and cheaper in China than any part of the world. 



The Bamboo is useful for a thousand purposes of fur- 

 niture or ornament, and the discovery of making paper 

 from straw, although new perhaps in Europe, is of very 

 ancient date in China, the straw of rice and other grain, 

 the bark of the Mulberry tree, Cotton shrub, Hemp and 

 Is T ettles ; and other plants and materials are used in tb« 



