COTTON.

HIS fibre is the product of a dicotyledonous plant or shrub belonging to

the natural order of the Malvacecz, and called Gossypium arboreum ; the•word cotton (French, coton) is of Arabian origin. Cotton is found principallyin India, and was known and used there, as well as in Persia, Egypt, and AsiaMinor, many centuries before the discovery of America, when it was found tobe tolerably well known in that country also. Pliny mentions cotton as anEgyptian product, calling it xylon or gossypion . According to M. Ampere, jun Mthe microscopical examination of the wrappings of mummies show that wovencotton tissue was first used for that purpose about 80 a.d. In the year 1834,*James Thomson, F.R.S., instituted some interesting researches on this subject.He says :—

“ My attention was attracted to the subject of Egyptian manufactures by thelate Mr. Belzoni in the year 1822, during the exhibition of a model of theancient tomb discovered by that enterprising traveller in Egypt. He had thegoodness to present to me various specimens of cloth, chiefly from themummies in his possession, one of which he had entirely denuded.

“ On my remarking that these fabrics scarcely deserved the appellation of‘ fine linen,’ which from all antiquity had been bestowed on the linen of Egypt,and that the observations of Dr. Hadley, in the “ Philosophical Transactions ”for the year 1764, had thrown some doubt on the supposed fineness of thislinen, he informed me that, during his researches in Egypt in those tombs andmummy-pits which he had explored, he had met with cloth of every degree offineness, from the coarsest sacking to the finest and most transparent muslin,a faCt which I subsequently found in a great degree confirmed by the acquisi-tion of some interesting specimens of mummy-cloth sent to this country by thethen Consul General of Egypt, the late Mr. Salt. The subject appearing tome sufficiently interesting to deserve investigation, and having collected avariety of specimens of cloth, my first care was to ascertain of what materialthey were made. This question had already engaged the attention of variousenquirers and given birth to learned dissertations.

“ Rouelle, in the “ Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences ” for theyear 1750 ; Larcher, the translator of “ Herodotus,” in the notes to that cele-brated work ; and the learned John Reinhold Foster, who wrote a traCt “ DeBysso Antiquorum,” had all endeavoured to prove from their own examination

* The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, vol. v., p. 355.