[Illustration: _Plate I._ _From Original Drawings_ CHINESE LOOMS. _See Page 119._] THE HISTORY OF SILK, COTTON, LINEN, WOOL, AND OTHER FIBROUS SUBSTANCES; INCLUDING OBSERVATIONS ON SPINNING, DYEING AND WEAVING. ALSO AN ACCOUNT OF THE PASTORAL LIFE OF THE ANCIENTS, THEIR SOCIAL STATE AND ATTAINMENTS IN THE DOMESTIC ARTS. WITH APPENDICES ON PLINY’S NATURAL HISTORY; ON THE ORIGIN AND MANUFACTURE OF LINEN AND COTTON PAPER; ON FELTING, NETTING, &C. DEDUCED FROM COPIOUS AND AUTHENTIC SOURCES. ILLUSTRATED BY STEEL ENGRAVINGS. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF STREET. 1845. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, BY HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, THIS VOLUME IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. PREFACE. History, until a recent period, was mainly a record of gigantic crimes and their consequent miseries. The dazzling glow of its narrations lighted never the path of the peaceful Husbandman, as his noiseless, incessant exertions transformed the howling wilderness into a blooming and fruitful garden, but gleamed and danced on the armor of the Warrior as he rode forth to devastate and destroy. One year of his labors sufficed to undo what the former had patiently achieved through centuries; and the campaign was duly chronicled while the labors it blighted were left to oblivion. The written annals of a nation trace vividly the course of its corruption and downfall, but are silent or meagre with regard to the ultimate causes of its growth and eminence. The long periods of peace and prosperity in which the Useful Arts were elaborated or perfected are passed over with the bare remark that they afford little of interest to the reader, when in fact their true history, could it now be written, would prove of the deepest and most substantial value. The world might well afford to lose all record of a hundred ancient battles or sieges if it could thereby regain the knowledge of one lost art, and even the Pyramids bequeathed to us by Egypt in her glory would be well exchanged for a few of her humble workshops and manufactories, as they stood in the days of the Pharaohs. Of the true history of mankind only a few chapters have yet been written, and now, when the deficiencies of that we have are beginning to be realized, we find that the materials for supplying them have in good part perished in the lapse of time, or been trampled recklessly beneath the hoof of the war-horse.