The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

ITS FITNESS FOR MAKING CLOTH. 203
shown for ascribing to it in this passage a sense diflerent from
that which it commonly bore. Spai'tus or tSpca'ttwi, is ad-
mitted to be used by all authors, Greek and Latin, and even
by Pliny himself in another passage*, to denote the Spanish
Broom. We learn from Sibthorp, that the Spanish Broom is
still called Sparto by the Greeks, and that it grows on dry
sandy hills throughout the islands of the Archipelago and the
continent of Greece. Sparto was indeed properly the Greek
name of this shrub, the Latin name being Genista, and the
use of the Greek name in Hispania Citerior may have been
owdng to the Grecian settlements on that coast, colonized from
Marseilles.
Besides the passages of Latin authors referred to by Schnei-
der and Billerbeck, and which it is unnecessary to repeat, the
following from Isidore of Seville appears decisive respecting the
acceptation of the term.
" Spartus frutex virgosus sine foUis, ab asperitate vocatus
volumma enim funium, qua ex eo fiunt, aspera sunt."' Originum
Li. x\'ii. c. 9.
This is the definition of a learned and observant author, who
lived m Spain, and who must have been familiar with the
facts. " Frutex virgosus sine foliis''' is a clear and striking
description of the Spanish Broom, the leaves of which are so
small as easily to escape observation!. The Stipa Tenacissi-
ma, on the other hand, is not a shrub with twigs, but a grass,
which grows in tufts, the long leaves being as abundant and
useful as the stems or straws. Clusius himself {I. c.) in lay-
ing down the distinction between the Spartum of the Greeks,
which he supposed to be the Spanish Broom, and the Spartum
of Pliny, which he supposed to be the Stipa Tenacissima, as-
serts that the former is a shrub {frutex), the latter a herb with
grassy leaves {herba graminacea folia j^roferens). It is clear,
therefore, that the inhabitants of Spain in the time of Isidore
* See L. xi. 8. where Pliny says, that bees obtain honey and wax from
" Spartum," and compare this with Aristotle, Hist. Anim. L. x. 40.
t Dioscorides also describes the Spanish Broom to be " a shrub bearing long
twigs without leaves." Isidore's etymology, deducing Spartus from Asper, is mau<
ifestly absurd.
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