Another great change for the better, in the improvement of the national garb, dates from the sixteenth century, and very probably from the Japanese invasion. This was the introduction of the cotton plant. Hitherto, silk for the very rich, and hemp and sea grass for the middle and poorer classes, had been the rule. In the north, furs were worn to a large extent, while plaited straw for various parts of the limbs served for clothing, as well as protection against storm and rain. The vegetable fibres were bleached to give whiteness. Cotton now began to be generally cultivated and woven. It is true that authorities do not agree as to the date of the first use of this plant. Dallet reports that cotton was formerly unknown in Corea, but was grown in China, and that the Chinese, in order to preserve a market for their textile fabrics within the peninsula, rigorously guarded, with all possible precautions, against the exportation of a single one of the precious seeds. One of the members of the annual embassy to Peking, with great tact, succeeded in procuring a few grains of cotton seed, which he concealed in the quill of his hat feather. Thus, in a manner similar to the traditional account of the bringing of silk-worms’ eggs inside a staff to Constantinople from China, the precious shrub reached Corea about five hundred years ago. It is now cultivated successfully in the peninsula in latitude far above that of the cotton belt in America, and even in Manchuria, the most northern limit of its growth. It is evident that a country which contains cotton, crocodiles, and tigers, cannot have a very bleak climate. It seems more probable that though the first seeds may have been brought from China, the cultivation of this vegetable wool was not pursued upon a large scale until after the Japanese invasion. Our reasons for questioning the accuracy of the date given in the common tradition is, that it is certain that cotton was not known in Northern China five hundred years ago. It was introduced into Central China from Turkestan in the fourteenth century, though known in the extreme south before that time. The Chinese pay divine honors to one Hwang Tao Po, the reputed instructress in the art of spinning and weaving the “tree-wool.” She is said to have come from Hainan Island. Though cotton was first brought to Japan by a Hindoo, in the year 799, yet the art of its culture seems to have been lost during the long civil wars of the middle ages. The fact that it had become extinct is shown in a verse of poetry composed by a court noble in 1248. “The cotton-seed, that was planted by the foreigner and not by the natives, has died away.” In another Japanese book, written about 1570, it is stated that cotton had again been introduced and planted in the southern provinces.