Note 969 — Chapter VI · PLUTARCH’S ESSAYS
Reading edition
Article on “Asbestos” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, which further states that Charlemagne was said to own a tablecloth which was cleaned by throwing it into the fire, and that in 1676 a merchant from China exhibited to the Royal Society a handkerchief of “salamander’s wool” or linum asbesti (asbestos linen). See also Marco Polo, I, 42, and Cordier’s note in Yule (1903), I, 216.