Note 40 — CHAP. VIII.
Reading edition
Ptolemy, the Geographer, places Serica adjoining to Scythia, extra Imaum, corresponding with Cashgar, Tangut, and Kitai, countries famous for the cultivation of the cotton plant. It would seem, indeed, from all the passages which occur in ancient authors concerning the Seres, that cotton was the substance alluded to, rather than silk, and that these people were not the present Chinese, but the Tartars of Kitai.
Quid nemora Æthiopum molli canentia lana? Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenuia Seres? Virg. Georg. ii. v. 120. ——Primique nova Phaethonte retecti Seres lanigeris repetebant vellera lucis. Sil. Ital. 1. 6. v. 3. ——Quod molli tondent de stipite Seres Frondea lanigeræ carpentes vellera Silvæ. Claudian. Seres lanificio Sylvarum nobiles perfusam aquá depectentes frondium canitiem. Plin. 1. 6. 17.
Horace makes the Seres expert in drawing the bow, a weapon in the use of which the Scythians were always famous.
Doctus Sagittas tendere Sericas Arcu paterno? Hor. lib. i. Od. 29. v. 9.
It certainly cannot be inferred that by the Seres, in any of the above quotations, was meant the same people as the present Chinese; on the contrary, the probability is that it did not allude to this nation, and that the ancients had not the least knowledge of its existence. It appears from another passage in Pliny, that the best iron in the world was in Sericum, and that the Seres exported it with their cloths and skins. The iron of the Chinese, as I have had occasion to observe, is remarkably bad, and all their articles of peltry are imported.