and cotton cloths were manufactured in Susiana, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Fifty years later Pliny describes the cotton plant and the stuffs made from it. He says, "In Upper Egypt, towards Arabia, there grows a shrub, which some call gossypium, and others xylon, from which the stuffs are made, which we call xylina. It is small, and bears a fruit resembling the filbert, within which is a downy wool, which is spun into thread. There is nothing to be preferred to these stuffs for whiteness or softness: beautiful garments are made from them for the priests of Egypt." The same author, in his description of the island of Tylos, in the Persian Gulf, enumerates, among its remarkable productions, "wool-bearing trees, with leaves exactly like those of the vine, but smaller, bearing a fruit like a gourd, and of the size of a quince, which, bursting when it is ripe, displays a ball of downy wool, from which are made costly garments resembling linen." Arrian, an Egyptian Greek, who lived in the first or second century, notices the exports from India of calicoes, muslins, and other cottons, both plain, and ornamented with flowers, made in the interior provinces ; that Masalia, the modern Masulipatam, was then, as it has been ever since, famous for the manufacture of cotton piece-goods; and that the muslins of Bengal were then, as at the present day, superior to all others, and received from the Greeks the name of Gangitiki, indicating that they were made on the borders of the Ganges.

Cottons and muslins gradually came into use in Arabia and the neighbouring countries, and the manufacture was diffused by the commercial activity and enterprise of the early followers of Mohammed. The fabrics called muslins received their name from Mosul in Mesopotamia; as, in the same way, at a later period, calico was named after Calicut; and the yellowish brown cotton fabrics, called nankeens, after the city Nankin.

Marco Polo, who visited most of the principal cities of Asia at the latter part of the thirteenth century, notices a manufacture of very fine cotton cloth at Arzingan, in Armenia Major: he states that cotton was abundantly grown and manufactured

in Persia and all the provinces bordering the Indus, and that in all parts of India this was the staple manufacture. He also notices, that in the province of Fokien, in China, cottons were woven of coloured threads, which were carried for sale to every part of the province of Mangi; but that silk was the ordinary dress of the people, from the prince to the peasant. The cotton plant first began to be cultivated for common use after the conquest of the empire by the Tartars; a strong resistance was made to its cultivation by the fabricators of wool and silk, but the opposition was soon put down, because, among all the materials of clothing, cotton was found to be best suited to the torrid zone, and the cheapest material of which cloth could be made; therefore, about the year 1368, the cultivation began to prevail throughout the empire. The Chinese cottons, especially the nankeens, have acquired much celebrity. At the present day cotton is not grown in sufficient quantity for the consumption of that empire, so that it is largely imported from India.

Cotton cloth, of African manufacture, was brought to London from Benin, on the coast of Guinea, in 1590. The cotton tree grows plentifully on the borders of the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger rivers; at Timbuctoo, Sierra Leone, in the Cape de Verd Islands, on the Coast of Guinea, in Abyssinia, and throughout the interior. The peculiar fitness of the soil and climate of Egypt prompted the present ruler of that country, a few years ago, to introduce the cotton plant, and in two years he exported no less than 5,623 bales to England. As this cotton was raised from the Georgian Sea-Island seeds, it is called SeaIsland Egyptian cotton.

The cotton manufacture was found in a very advanced state in America on the discovery of that continent by the Spaniards. Clavigero states, that "of cotton the Mexicans made large webs, and as delicate and fine as those of Holland, which were, with much reason, highly esteemed in Europe. They wove their cloths of different figures and colours, representing different animals and flowers. Of feathers, interwoven with cotton, they made mantles and bed-curtains, carpets,

gowns, and other things, not less soft than beautiful. With cotton also they interwove the finest hair of the belly of rabbits and hares, after having made and spun it into thread; of this they made most beautiful cloths, and in particular winter waistcoats for their lords." Among the presents sent by Cortez to Charles the Fifth, were "cotton mantles, some all white, others mixed with white and black, or red, green, yellow, and blue: waistcoats, handkerchiefs, counterpanes, tapestries, and carpets of cotton." Columbus found the cotton plant growing wild in the West India Islands, and on the continent of South America, where the inhabitants wore cotton dresses, and made their fishing nets of the same material.

To Spain belongs the honour of having introduced the cotton manufacture into Europe. The plant was cultivated and manufactured into clothing in Spain as early as the tenth century, about which time it was probably introduced by the Moors. It flourished on the fertile plains of Valencia, where it still grows wild. During some centuries Barcelona was celebrated for the manufacture of cotton sail-cloth and fustians, the latter being a strong fabric used to line garments, and which derives its name from the Spanish word fuste, signifying "substance." The Spanish Arabs made paper from cotton before that most useful article was known in Europe. When the Moors were expelled from Spain, the useful arts disappeared with them, and only by slow and laborious efforts were they introduced into other parts of Europe. The cotton manufacture is said to have been introduced at Venice at the beginning of the fourteenth century. Strong cottons, such as fustians and dimities, were made at Venice and Milan; and it is probable that even those were woven with a linen warp and a cotton weft, as was afterwards the custom in England, from the difficulty at that early period, of making the long, or warp threads, of sufficient strength in cotton to bear stretching in the loom. It is supposed that about this time cotton yarn was imported from Syria and Asia Minor, whence, in later times, the Italians and French obtained that article.

It must not be supposed that the cotton manufacture, as it now exists in England, was borrowed from any other nation. The present manufacture is due entirely to the genius and enterprise of Englishmen; and during little more than half a century it has sprung into existence, and become a sort of centre to the commercial world. At the early period to which our history refers, the only fabric manufactured in this country was a coarse and heavy article, probably half cotton and half linen, of too little importance to attract much notice; but calico, muslin, and the more delicate cotton goods, were never made in Europe, except possibly by the Moors in the south of Spain, until the invention of the spinning machinery in England.

At an early period, the fabrics made at Manchester, and some other towns in Lancashire, were for some reason called cottons, though they were actually woollen or linen goods. It has been suggested, that the word cottons, at that day, was only a corruption of coatings. The first notice on this subject is by Leland, who visited Lancashire in the reign of Henry the Eighth. He says: "Bolton-uponMoore market standeth most by cottons: divers villages, in the moores, about Bolton, do make cottons." This apparent proof of the early existence of the cotton manufacture is, however, disproved by an act of Edward the Sixth (1552), entitled, "For the true making of woollen cloth;" in which it is ordered, that all the cottons called Manchester, Lancashire, and Cheshire cottons, shall be of certain specified dimensions and weights, which could by no means apply to cottons, but only to coarse woollens. Camden, speaking of Manchester in 1590, says: "This town excels the towns immediately around it, in handsomeness, populousness, woollen manufactures, market-place, church, and college, but did much more excel them in the last age, as well by the glory of its woollen cloths, which they call Manchester cottons, as by the privilege of sanctuary, which the authority of parliament, under Henry the Eighth, transferred to Chester."

It seems impossible to fix the date of the introduction of the cotton

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manufacture in England. The earliest actual record on the subject is a work published in the year 1641, called The Treasure of Traffic," by Lewis Roberts. Speaking of the town of Manchester, he says, "They buy cotton wool in London, that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home worke the same and perfect it into fustians, vermillions, dimities, and other stuffes, and then return it to London, where the same is sold, and not seldom sent into forrain parts, who have means, at far easier termes, to provide themselves of the said first materials."

It appears, therefore, that, in the year 1641, the cotton manufacture had become fairly established in Manchester, from which town not only the home trade, but the distant markets of the Levant, were supplied with several descriptions of cotton goods. The linen manufacture still continued to flourish in Manchester, and indeed linen yarn was used as the warp for fustians, and for most cotton goods in this country, down to the year 1773.

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Dr. Fuller, who wrote in 1662, says that the inhabitants of Manchester, buying the cotton wool or yarne coming from beyond the sea, make it here into fustians, to the good employment of the poor, and great improvement of the rich therein, serving mean people for their outsides, and their betters for the lining of their garments. Bolton is the staple place for this commodity, being brought thither from all parts of the country. As for Manchester, the cottons thereof carry away the credit in our nation, and so they did a hundred and fifty years agoe. For, when learned Leland, on the cost of King Henry the Eighth, with his guide, travailed Lancashire, he called Manchester the fairest and quickest town in this country; and sure I am it hath lost neither spruceness nor spirits since that time. Other commodities made in Manchester are so small in themselves, and various in their kinds, they will fill the shop of a haberdasher of small wares. Being, therefore, too many for me to reckon up or remember, it will be the safest way to wrap them all together in some Manchester ticken, and to fasten them

with the pinns (to prevent their falling out and scattering), or tye them with the tape; and also, because sure bind, sure find, to bind them about the points and laces all made in the same place."

Mr. Baines is inclined to think, that the art was brought from Flanders, by the protestant artisans and workmen who fled from Antwerp on the capture and ruin of that great trading city, by the Duke of Parma, in 1585, and also from other cities of the Spanish Netherlands. "Great numbers of these victims of a sanguinary persecution took refuge in England, and some of them settled in Manchester; and there is the stronger reason to suppose that the manufacture of cotton would then be commenced here, as there were restrictions and burdens on foreigners setting up business as masters in England, in the trades then carried on in this country, whilst foreigners commencing a new art would be exempt from those restrictions. The warden and fellows of Manchester college had the wisdom to encourage the settlement of the foreign clothiers in that town, by allowing them to cut firing from their extensive woods, as well as to take the timber necessary for the construction of their looms, on paying the small sum of fourpence yearly. At that period of our history, when capital was small, and the movements of trade comparatively sluggish, a new manufacture would be likely to extend itself slowly, and to be long before it attracted the notice of authors. That a manufacture might in those days gradually take root, and acquire strength, without even for half a century being commemorated in any book that should be extant after the lapse of two centuries more, will be easily credited by those who have searched for the records of our modern improvements in the same manufacture. If the greatest mechanical inventions, and the most stupendous commercial phenomena, have passed almost unnoticed in a day when authors were so numerous, the mere infancy of the cotton manufacture may well have been without record in an age when the press was far less active."

would carry. A fresh spindle was then mounted, and those already loaded with thread were stored in a basket until a sufficient quantity were collected for the weaver.

The spindle was made of a reed, or of some light wood, and was generally from eight to twelve inches in length. At the top was a slit or clasp, for attaching the thread, so that the weight of the spindle might keep it stretched. The lower end was inserted in a whorl or wheel, made of some

heavy material, which served to keep it steady, and to promote its rotation. The spinner every now and then gave the spindle a fre-h turn, so as to increase the twist of the thread. When the spindle touched the ground, "a length" was said to be spun, and the thread was taken out of the slit, and wound upon the spindle: the upper part was then inserted in the slit, and a new length commenced. The Roman poet Catullus briefly mentions these particulars :

In ancient times the spindle and distaff were frequently made of some precious material, beautifully ornamented. Thus Homer has mentioned the present of a golden distaff being made to Helen; and Theocritus has celebrated the distaff in his twentyeighth Idyll, on the occasion of a visit to a friend to whose wife he presented an ivory distaff. The poem begins thus:

"O distaff, friend to warp and woof, Minerva's gift in man's behoof, Whom careful housewives still retain And gather to their household's gain, With me repair," &c.

The Hindoos form their distaff of the leading shoot of some young tree, carefully peeled; and for the spindle they select the beautiful shrub Evony mus, which has hence obtained the popular name of "the spindle-tree." With these simple implements, and by means of the exquisite touch which the Hindoos possess, are spun those delicate cotton threads from which the celebrated Indian muslins are made.

The use of the spindle and distaff was superseded in England by the spinning-wheel, in or soon after the reign of Henry the Eighth. It was probably introduced from Hindustan, where it had been in use for ages; but domestic legends say, that it was invented by the fairies, or some supernatural power; and, no

doubt, at the time of its introduction, it was regarded as a great discovery in which all classes of society were interested. Two kinds of household wheels have been described as long in use among spinsters; the first is commonly called, in this country, "the big wheel," from the size of its rim, or "the wool wheel," from its being employed in the spinning of sheep's wool. The Saxony, or Leipsic wheel, so called from its German origin, was used for spinning flax, and was an improvement on the old Jersey wheel, as it enabled the spinner to mount two spindles on the same wheel, so as to form a thread with each hand. The worsted wheel was also employed to spin cotton, for which it was equally well adapted; and this it did by two distinct processes. The cotton having been picked and cleaned, was carded or brushed with coarse wire brushes, called hand cards: the cotton being spread upon one of these, was combed with the other until the fibres were all disposed in one direction: it was then taken off in soft fleecy rolls, called cardings, each about twelve inches long, and three-quarters of an inch thick. These cardings were next formed into a coarse thread or roving; for which purpose one end of the carding was twisted round the spindle, and the spinster with the right hand turned