Ess although the scutching machin

Sation. "And yet no stranger than some of the notions we hold now, I
imagine. We do not know all there is to be known ourselves--not by a
good sight--even though we do think ourselves very up-to-date. With all
the learning the ages have rolled up handed to us in a bundle we should
blush were we not better informed than poor Sir John Mandeville, who had
no books to speak of. Had he been able to read Herodotus, for example,
he would then have learned from that Greek writer who lived so many
centuries ago that there was in India a wild tree having for its fruit
fleeces finer than those of sheep; and that the natives spun cloth out
of them and made clothing for themselves. Herodotus tells many other
interesting facts about cotton and its uses, too. A present, he remarks,
sent to the king of Egypt, was packed in cotton so that it would not get
broken. That sounds natural, doesn't it? He even makes our clever
inventor, Eli Whitney, appear unoriginal by describing a Greek machine
that separated cotton seeds from the fiber." "Then the cotton gin wasn't
new, after all," frowned Carl. "The idea of it was not new, no; but the
device Whitney and his friend Mr. Miller produced was a fresh method for
getting this age-old result. Up to 1760 the same primitive ginning
machine was used in England as had been used in India for many, many
years. Think of that! But as civilization grew and people not only wove
more cloth but made an increasing variety of kinds the demand for
material to make it increased. And old Herodotus is by no means the only
early historian to mention cotton. Other writers went into even more
details than he, describing the plant, its leaves and blossoms, and
telling how it was set out in rows. Apparently as long ago as 519 B.C.
the Persians were spinning and weaving cloth and dyeing it all sorts of
colors, using for the purpose the leaves and roots of tropical plants.
It therefore followed that when the officers of Emperor Alexander's army
returned from the East they brought back to Greece tales of the cotton
plant, and Greeks and Romans alike began to use the material for awnings
much as we do now." "How funny!" smiled Carl. "I'll bet they were glad
to have something to shade them from the sun. I shouldn't relish
spending the summer in Greece or Italy." "I guess you wouldn't.
Baileyville may be hot in July but it is nothing to what Rome must have
been. T