Tantâ tamque multiplici fertilitate abundat rerum omnium Cyprus, ut nullius externi indigens adminiculi, indigenis viribus, a fundamento ipso carinæ ad supremos usque carbasos ædificet onerarium navem, omnibusque armamentis instructam mari committat.--_Amm. Marcellinus_, xiv. 8. Apuleius mentions _carbasina_ in conjunction with _bombycina_ and other kinds of cloth[423]. He may consequently be presumed to use the word in its proper sense, to wit, as denoting calico or muslin. In the same manner cotton is distinguished from silk by Sidonius Apollinaris[424]. Also we may presume that cotton and not linen sails are to be understood in the following line of Avienus: Si tamen in Boream flectantur carbasa cymbæ. _Descr. Orbis_, 799. [423] Metamorphoseon l. viii. p. 579, 580. ed. Oudendorpii. (Quoted in Part First, Chapter ii. p. 35.) [424] L. ii. _Epist._ 2. (Quoted in Part First, Chapter iii. p. 61.). Here the writer not only professes to give geographical information, but he is describing the Indian seas and islands; and as in the present day, so also in ancient times, the sails used in the navigation of those seas were probably made of cotton. Strabo uses the word καρπασίναι in describing the official dress of a certain class of priestesses among the Cimbri[425]. Although it is possible, that muslin may have been conveyed to them to be used on solemn occasions, it appears more probable that fine linen or cambric, which was manufactured at no great distance among the Atrebates, ought here to be understood. [425] L. vii. cap. 2. § 3. p. 336. ed. Siebenkees. Pliny mentions cotton in four different passages of his Natural History. Two of them are translated with some inaccuracies from the passages of Theophrastus. To his translation of one of these passages Pliny annexes the remark, derived perhaps from some other source, that the inhabitants of Tylos called their Cotton Trees _gossympins_, and that an island which was called the smaller Tylos, distant ten miles, was still more fertile in cotton than the larger island of the same name. The third passage introduces cotton under its proper name, Carbasa. It would imply that cotton was first grown or manufactured at Tarraco in Spain, than which assertion nothing can be more inaccurate and groundless. The fourth passage is also contrary to all previous evidence, inasmuch as it represents cotton to be the native growth of Egypt. It calls the Cotton Plant _gossypion_, and hence the name has been given to it by modern botanists. Supposing this last passage to be genuine, still we know not on what authority Pliny depended, or from what source he derived his information, nor can we tell to what extent he allowed himself to be inaccurate in transcribing or translating. Taken by itself, therefore, it appears to us that this passage is no better proof of the growth of cotton anciently in Egypt than the third passage is of its first discovery in Spain.