the principal colour. After a fecond washing, a more fkilful artist extends the cloth on a fmall narrow table, and marks the fhades. Their pencils are made of a piece of BAMBOO, pointed and split; an inch above the point is a cushion of wool, to retain the colours, which the artist preffes to make the liquid defcend the length of the reed." In the dying of cottons of different colours, an art practised by ancient as well as modern Indians, a still greater proficiency in chemistry was neceffary to fix the various tints. In painting these cloths they undoubtedly purfued a process somewhat fimilar to the Egyptians, fo minutely defcribed by Pliny: after having drawn the outlines of their defign upon the piece of linen, they filled each compartment of it with different forts of gums, proper to absorb the various colours; fo that none of them could be diftinguished from the whiteness of the cloth : then they dipped it for a moment in a cauldron, full of boiling liquor prepared for that purpofe, and drew it thence painted in all the colours they intended. And, what was very remarkable, the colours neither decayed by

* Sonnerat's Voyages, vol. ii. p. 122.

time nor moved in the washing, the cauftic impregnating the liquor wherein it was dipped having, during the immerfion, penetrated and fixed every colour intimately through the whole contexture of the cloth.* Thus was the variegated veil of Jis manufactured; thus were the linens that folded the Egyptian mummies ftained; and thus only could the chintzes of India receive their beautiful and varied dies. De Pauw afferts, that, with the Egyptians, only one dark dye was used; and, by the aid of acids and alkali, the cloth received three or four different tints. It was neceffary, he adds, to trace previously all the figures with a feather or a pencil, that the cauftic and alkaline liquids might be distributed exactly on the places where they were intended to produce effect.†

How yery early the ancients were acquainted with the art of extracting colours from vegetables, and applied them in dying, may be learned from Genefis, where it is faid, that, to distinguish the first-born child of Tamar,

Plinii Nat. Hift. lib. xxxv. cap.ii. fect. 42.

De Pauw's Philofophical Reflections on the Egyptians and Chinese, vol. i. p. 206.

the

the midwife tied a scarlet thread about its arm, * This, it will be observed, was in the eighteenth century before Chrift; and in the time of Mofes, two or three centuries after, we read in the following paffage not only of the great progrefs of the ancients in the art of dying, but in feveral others intimately connected with the fubject of these Differtations.

And this is the offering which ye shall take of them; gold, and filver, and brass,

And blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair,

And rams' fkins dyed red, and badgers' skins, and shittim-wood,

Oil for the light, Spices for anointing oil and for fweet incenfe,

Onyx-ftones, and ftones to be fet in the ephod and in the breaft-plate.†

At the same time how very familiarly the ancients must have been acquainted with fome chemical process for permanently fixing colours is evident from Arrian, who relates, that, amidst other spoil found at Sufa by Alexander, were five thousand quintals of Hermione pur

Genefis, cap. xxxv. v. 28.

+ Exodus, cap. xxv. v. 3−7.

ple,

ple, which exceeded that of Tyre in beauty, and had been hoarded up there by the Persian sovereigns during the space of one hundred and ninety years, but the colour of which was as fresh and beautiful as if just come from the dyer.

Thus far have we confidered the progress of the ancient Indians in the art of painting on cotton: their filks were probably enriched with the fame fplendid colours, in a way as nearly fimilar as their different texture would allow. But as these rich filks and these beautiful cottons have fo immemorially formed the staple commodity of the trade carried on between India and Europe, a concise account of the origin and manufacture of both is, in fome degree, indifpenfable in a work of this kind, and will, probably, be not difpleafing to the reader :- and, in the first place, concerning the fabrication of cotton, called Goffypium by the Romans, the more immediate fubject of our inquiry.

Of the vegetable that produces this useful commodity, there are feveral varieties, from the creeping shrub to the lofty tree; but that, from which the finest and most valuable cotton is produced, is a plant, of moderate fize, growing

growing abundantly, and with little affiftance from culture, in Bengal and on the coast of Coromandel. After producing very beautiful flowers, it is loaded with a fruit as large as a walnut, whofe external coat is entirely black. When completely ripe, it opens of itself, and discovers a downy fubftance, extremely white, which is the cotton enclosed in oval capfules. When gathered, the cotton is, in fome places, thrown upon a floor and threshed, in order that it may be separated from the black feeds and hufks that enclosed it. In other places, to separate the cotton from the feeds, they ufe little machines, which being played by the motion of a wheel, the cotton falls on one fide and the feed on the other. When thus feparated, the operation of carding takes place, which the authentic Sonnerat, who wrote from what he faw in India, thus defcribes.. "The machine to card cotton is fabricated with great fimplicity; it is composed of a piece of wood fix or feven feet long. At each extremity a catgut ftring is tied, which, on touching, forms a found, on which account it is called violon. The violon is fufpended by a ftring, from the string of a bow, fastened to the ceiling. The work

man,