excellence, and the natives clotlie themselves in cloths made therefrom,'* and (lib. iii,
cap. 47) calls it tree wool (c/^iov dCvo ivX^u). From India the manufacture
seems to have reached Persia^ where, according to Strabo (lib. zv), who died a.d. 2(,
it grew in Susiana, a province of Persia, at the head of the Persian Gulf, and was
Ipanufactured into doth. At the Christian era the growth and manufacture were
parried on in Egypt ; and Pliny (His. Nat., lib. xix, cap 1) mentions, a.d. 70, that
the cotton plant was grown in Upper Egypt towards Arabia. Arrian, who wrote in
the second century (Arrian Indi, c. 16, p. 582), stated that cotton cloths were
among the articles received from India by the Romans of his time, though at this
date the importations must have been of a desultory character, as no mention is made
of the different kinds by any writers of the period, or in the Roman law de Publieanit
it veetigalUnUf which detailed all the different kinds of merchandize then imported ;
indeed until Justinian*i Digest of the Lawif in which, in a list of goods then im-
ported, is enumerated (a.d. 552) Indian cotton goods, we do not find notice taken of
them by any writer, though other goods are repeatedly mentioned, and the reason
seems to have been, that while these goods could not compete with silks as articles of
luxury, they did not, being comparatively dearer, displace woollen and flax manu-
Dsctures, particularly as these latter must from long employment have been adapted
to the tastes and wishes of the people.
