polymita appellant, Alexandria instituit: scutullis dividere, Gallia.” But to weave with a good number of threads, so as to work the cloths called polymita, was first taught in Alexandria; to divide by checks, in Gaul.[6] [1] Lib. viii. c. 47. [2] Lyric. c. vi. vi. [3] De Re Rustica, ii. 2. [4] Gesta Regum Anglorum, t. 1. lib. ii. p. 198, ed. Hardy. [5] Journal of the Archæological Institute, t. XXII. p. 254. [6] Plin. lib. viii. The native botanical home of COTTON is in the East. India almost everywhere throughout her wide-spread countries, and many kingdoms of old, arrayed, as she still arrays herself, in cotton, which she gathered from a plant of the mallow family, that had its wild growth there; and in this same vegetable produce the lower orders of the people dwelling still further to the east were fain to clothe themselves. HEMP, a plant of the nettle tribe, and called by botanists “cannabis sativa,” was of old well known in the far north of Germany, and all over the ancient Scandinavia. Full two thousand five hundred years ago, Herodotus[7] thus wrote of it: “Hemp grows in the country of the Scythians, which except in the thickness and height of the stalk, very much resembles flax; in the qualities mentioned, however, the hemp is much superior. It grows in a wild state, and is also cultivated. The Thracians make clothing of it very like linen cloth; nor could any person, without being very well acquainted with the substance, say whether this clothing is made of hemp or flax.” From “cannabis,” its name in Latin, have we taken our own word “canvas,” to mean any texture woven of hempen thread. [7] Herod. book iv. 74. FLAX