The properties of cotton strongly recommend it for clothing, especially in comparison with linen, both in hot and cold countries. Linen has, indeed, in some respects, the advantage; it forms a smooth, firm, and beautiful cloth, and is very agreeable wear in temperate climates; but it is less comfortable than cotton, and less conducive to health, either in heat or in cold. Cotton, being a bad conductor of heat, as compared with linen, preserves the body at a more equable temperature. The functions of the skin, through the medium of perspiration, are the great means of maintaining the body at an equable temperature amidst the vicissitudes of the atmosphere. But linen, like all good conductors of heat, freely condenses the vapour of perspiration, and accumulates moisture upon the skin: the wetted linen becomes cold, chills the body, and checks perspiration, thus not only producing discomfort, but endangering health. Calico, on the other hand, like all bad conductors of heat, condenses little of the perspiration, but allows it to pass off in the form of vapour. Moreover, when the perspiration is so copious as to accumulate moisture, calico will absorb a greater quantity of that moisture than linen. It has therefore a double advantage, it accumulates less moisture, and absorbs more.

From the above considerations, it is evident, that in cold climates, or in the nocturnal cold of tropical climates, cotton clothing is much better calculated to preserve the warmth of the body than linen. In hot climates, also, it is more conducive to health and comfort, by admitting of freer perspiration.

Another advantage of calico over linen has been mentioned to me by a scientific gentleman, as important; calico, being a worse conductor of electricity than linen, does not so easily allow the body to be deprived of its due supply of the electric fluid; and this, I am assured, has no small influence on the warmth and comfort of the body.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY HISTORY OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE.

Spinning and Weaving invented at a very early period; known to the Egyptians in the time of Joseph.-Linen the national manufacture of Egypt; Cotton, that of India.-Antiquity of the cotton manufacture in India.-Testimony of Herodotus; of Nearchus, Arrian, and Strabo.-Growth and manufacture of cotton spread to Persia and Egypt.-Testimony of Pliny.-Curious etymology of Cotton.-Ancient commerce in Indian cottons.-Testimony of the Periplus.Early excellence of the manufacture.-Indian cottons and muslins imported sparingly into Rome and Constantinople.-The use of silks much more rapidly extended than that of cottons.

THE arts of spinning and weaving, which rank next in importance to agriculture, having been found among almost all the nations of the old and new continents, even among those little removed from barbarism, are reasonably supposed to have been invented at a very early period of the world's history. They evidently existed in Egypt in the time of Joseph, 1700 years before the Christian era, as it is recorded that Pharaoh arrayed him in vestures of fine linen." (Genesis

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According to Pliny, Semiramis, the Assyrian queen, was believed to have been the inventress of the art of weaving. Minerva is in some of the ancient statues represented with a distaff, to intimate that she taught men the art of spinning; and this honour is given by the Egyptians to Isis, by the Mohammedans to a son of Japhet, by the Chinese to the consort of their emperor Yao, and by the Peruvians to Mamaoella, wife to Manco-Capac, their first sovereign. These traditions serve only to carry the invaluable arts of spinning and weaving up to an extremely remote period, long prior to that of authentic history.

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xli. 42.)* Two centuries later, the Hebrews carried with them, on their departure from that ancient seat of civilization, the arts of weaving, spinning, dyeing, and embroidery; for when Moses constructed the tabernacle in the wilderness, "the women that were wise-hearted did spin with their hands, and brought that which they had spun, both of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, and of fine linen." (Exod. xxxv. 25.) They also spun goats' hair ;" and Bezaleel and Aholiab "worked all manner of work, of the engraver, and of the cunning workman, and of the embroiderer, in blue, and in purple, and in scarlet, and in fine linen, and of the weaver." (35.) (35.) These passages contain the earliest mention of woven clothing, which was linen, the national manufacture of Egypt. The prolific borders of the Nile furnished from the remotest periods, as at the present time, abundance of the finest flax ;t and it appears, from the testimony both of sacred and profane history, that linen continued to be almost the only kind of clothing used in Egypt till after the Christian era.‡ The Egyptians exported their "linen yarn," and "fine linen," to the kingdom of Israel, in the days of Solomon, (2 Chron. i. 16; Prov. vii. 16;) their "fine linen with broidered work," to Tyre, (Ezek. xxvii. 7;) and

• It is conjectured by the President de Goguet and other learned men, that the Hebrew word translated in our version, "fine linen," really signifies cotton. A passage in Herodotus, (book ii. chap. 86,) has also been understood as intimating that the Egyptians wrapped their mummies in cotton cloths. Both these conjectures seem to me destitute alike of proof and probability; but as the discussion would be too long for a note, I shall state the reasons for the conclusion I have come to in the Appendix, A.

✦ Paintings representing the gathering and preparation of flax have been found on the walls of the ancient sepulchres at Eleithias and Beni Hassan, in Upper Egypt, and are described and copied by Hamilton-" Remarks on several parts of Turkey, and on ancient and modern Egypt,” pp. 97 and 287, plate 23.

↑ Herodotus, book ii. c. 37, 81.

the same kind of cloth to Greece, in the days of Herodotus. They were still noted for their manufacture of linen, and their export of flax, under the Roman emperors.† Linen, in fact, continued to be the principal article of clothing worn by all the nations west of the Indus; and to the present day it is most extensively used in the East, and in every part of the world. The fleece of the sheep was probably one of the first materials made into cloth wool is distinctly mentioned, along with linen, in the books of Moses and Solomon;‡ and though little used in the warm climate of Egypt, woollen garments were common in the cooler regions of Europe and Asia Minor. Manufactures both of linen and woollen existed in Greece in the days of Homer.

It is in the highest degree probable, that cotton was manufactured in India, as early as linen in Egypt. If the opinion is correct, that the arts of spinning and weaving were known to the founders of all the Eastern nations, the Indians would be quite as likely to make cloth of the woolly produce of their cotton plant, as the Egyptians of the fibrous bark of their flax. In the days of Herodotus, the father of history, who wrote about the year 445 B.C., it is evident that cotton was the customary wear of the Indians; for among the particulars which his keen and universal curiosity gleaned concerning that remote nation, he records, as one of the beautiful and wondrous things that distinguished them, -"They possess likewise a kind of plant, which,

Herodotus, book ii. c. 105.

+ Gibbon's Roman Empire, vol. 1, c. 10, p. 444, 8vo. edition.

↑ Deuteronomy xxii. 11.-" Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sort, as of woollen and linen together." And Proverbs xxxi. 13.-" She seeketh wool and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands."

C

instead of fruit, produces wool, of a finer and better quality than that of sheep of this the Indians make their clothes."* If, then, at that period, cottons were the common clothing of the people, it may with strong probability be inferred that they had been so for centuries, as the most striking characteristic of the Indians, arising out of the spirit of their institutions, has always been their extreme indisposition to change. It should be remarked, that the Greek historian mentions this plant as peculiar to India. He gives no hint of a vegetable wool being made into clothing elsewhere. Of the Babylonians he says, distinctly, that their dress was of linen and of wool, (book i. c. 195;) and of the Egyptians, that their dress was only of linen, except that the priests wore a white woollen shawl when not engaged in their ministrations, (book ii. c. 37, 81.) It may therefore be concluded with certainty, that at this time the cotton manufacture prevailed generally in India, and also that it existed in no other country westward of the Indus.

We are led to the same conclusion by the statements of Nearchus, the admiral whom Alexander the Great employed (327 B.C.) to descend the Indus, and to navigate the coast of Persia to the river Tigris. From the interesting and obviously faithful narrative of this observant navigator, substantially preserved in Arrian's History of Alexander, we learn that, "the Indians wore linen garments, the substance whereof they were made growing upon trees; and this," he says, "is indeed

• Herodotus, book iii. c. 106.

† In India, “the manners, the customs, and the dress of the people are almost as permanent and invariable as the face of nature itself."—Robertson's Historical Disquisition concerning Ancient India, sect. i.