In order to establish this point we now proceed to mention the evidence respecting the application of it to such uses. It has been employed for making cloth in Turkey, in Italy, and the South of France, but in circumstances, which were either specially favorable to the manufacture, or where flax could not be cultivated. It is manufactured into shirts in Albania according to Dr. Sibthorp[210]. Nearly a century ago, Pope Benedict XIV. brought a colony of Albanians to inhabit a barren and desolate portion of his territory on the sea-coast. Here they obtained a very fine, strong, durable thread from the Broom and the _Nettle_, and used it, when woven, in place of linen[211]. Trombelli, who relates this fact, also gives an account of the manufacture of broom-bark in the vicinity of Lucca, where the hills, called Monte Cascia, are covered with this plant[212]. “Formerly,” he says, “the people derived no other advantage from the shrub than to feed sheep and goats with it, and to heat their stoves and furnaces. But their ingenuity and industry have now made it far more profitable. They steep the twigs for some days in the thermal waters of Bagno a Acqua near Lucca. _After this process the bark is easily stript off, and it is then combed and otherwise treated like flax._ It becomes finer than hemp could be made; it is easily _dyed_ of _any_ color, and may be used for garments of _any_ kind[213].” In the vicinity of Pisa we find that the twigs of the Spanish Broom were in like manner soaked in the thermal waters, and that a coarse cloth was manufactured from the bark[214]. [210] Flora Græca, No. 671. [211] Trombelli, Bononiensis Scient. atque Artium Instituti Commentarii, tom. vi. p. 118. [212] Trombelli calls the plant Genista, and says it is the kind called by botanists “Genista juncea flore luteo.” This is the Spartium Junceum of Linnæus. See Ray, Catal. Stirp. Europ. and Scopoli, Flora Carniolica, 1772, tom. i. No. 870. [213] Bononiensis Scientiarum atque Artium Instituti Commentarii, tom. iv. Bonon. 1757, p. 349-351. A similar account of the manufacture of the “Teladi Ginestia” at Bagno a Acqua is given by Mr. John Strange, who says he had sent an account of it to the Society for encouraging Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce. Lettera sopra l’Origine della carta naturale di Cortona, Pisa 1764. p. 79. [214] Mém. de l’Académie des Sciences, Paris 1763.