WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6) cover

The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 142: CHAP. 21. (10.)—TREES OF THE ISLANDS OF THE PERSIAN SEA. THE COTTON TREE.
By the Elder Pliny
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

Classics of LiteratureHistory - AncientNature/Gardening/AnimalsScience - Biology

About This Book

The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 21. (10.)—TREES OF THE ISLANDS OF THE PERSIAN SEA. THE COTTON TREE.

In the same gulf, there is the island of Tylos,485 covered with a forest486 on the side which looks towards the East, where it is washed also by the sea at high tides. Each of the trees is in size as large as the fig; the blossoms are of an indescribable sweetness, and the fruit is similar in shape to a lupine, but so rough and prickly, that it is never touched by any animal. On a more elevated plateau of the same island, we find trees that bear wool, but of a different nature from those of the Seres;487 as in these trees the leaves produce nothing at all, and, indeed, might very readily be taken for those of the vine, were it not that they are of smaller size. They bear a kind of gourd, about the size of a quince;488 which, when arrived at maturity, bursts asunder and discloses a ball of down, from which a costly kind of linen cloth is made.

(11.) This tree is known by the name of gossypinus:489 the smaller island of Tylos, which is ten miles distant from the larger one, produces it in even greater abundance.