silk began. One reads the foUowing in " UHistoire gene'rale de la .Chine,"by M. Mailla:— " The Emperor Hoang-ti, who lived 2,600 years before our era, wished that Si-Ung-chi, his wife, should contribute to the happiness of his people; he charged her to study the silkworm, and to try to utiHse its threads. Si-ling-chi caused a great quantity of these insects to be coUected, which she fed herself in a place destined exclusively for the purpose; she not only discovered the means of rearing them, but still furdier the manner of winding off their silk and of employing it in the manufacture of fabrics."

It may be asked, however, if the learned men vdio composed this recital did not collect under the reign of the emperor Hoang-ti all the events and all the discoveries whose dates were lost in the obscurity of the most remote periods of history. Is not the Empress Si-ling-chi a mythical person? a sort of Chinese Ceres, to whom, under the title of goddess of the silkworm, they then raised altars?

Here, at any rate, is how Duhalde * analyses the recital of.the Chinese annalists on the remarkable fact of the introduction of the silkworm and its rich products into the Chinese empire:— " Up to the time of this queen (Si-ling-chi)," says he, " when the country was only lately cleared and brought into cultivadon, the people employed the skins of animals as clothes. But these skins were no longer sufficient for the multitude of the inhabitants; necessity made them industrious; they applied themselves to the manufacture of cloth wherewith to cover themselves. But it was to this princess that they owed the useful invention of silk stuffs. Afterwards,

** Description de la Chine," tome ii., p. 205.

the empress, named by Chinese authors, according to the order of their dynasties, found an agreeable occupation in superintending the hatching, rearing, and feeding of silkworms, in making silk, and working it up when made. There was an enclosure attached to the palace for the cultivation of mulberry trees. " The empress, accompanied by queens and the greatest ladies of the court, went in state into this enclosure, and gathered with her own hand the leaves of three branches which her ladies in waiting had lowered till they were within her reach; the finest pieces of silk which she made herself, or which were made by her orders and under her own eye, were destined for the ceremony of the grand sacrifice offered to Chang-si. (Plate V.) " It is p'obable," adds Duhalde, " that policy had more to do than anything else with all this trouble taken by the empresses. Their intention was to induce, by their example, the princesses and ladies of quality, and the whole people, to rear silkworms: in the same way as the emperors, to ennoble in some sort agriculture, and to encourage the people to undertake laborious works, never failed, at the beginning of each spring, to guide the plough in person, and with great state to plough up a few furrows, and in these sow some seed.

" As far as concerns the empresses, it is a long time since they have ceased to apply themselves to the manufacture of silk; one sees, nevertheless, in the precincts of the imperial palace, a large space covered with houses, the road leading to which is still called the road which leads to the place destined for the rearing of silkworms, for the amusement of the empresses and queens. In the books of the philosopher Mencius, is a wise police rule, made under the first reigns, which determines the space destined for the cultivation of mulberry trees, according to the extent of the land possessed by each private individual.^' M. Stanislas Julien^' tells us of many regulations made by the Emperor of China, to render obligatory the care and attention requisite to rearing silk. Tchin-iu, being governor of the district of Kien-Si, ordered that every man should plant fifty feet of land with mulberry trees.! The Emperor (under the dynasty of Witei) gave to each man twenty acres

"Resume des principaux Traites Chinois sur la Culture des Miiriers et I'Education des Vers a Soie, traduit par Stanislas Julien." Paris, imprimerie royale, 1837. t *' Annales de la Dynastie des Liang."

V. — ^The Empress Si-ling-chi gathering Mulberry Leaves

of land on condition that he planted fifty feet with mulberry trees.* Hien-tsang (who ascended the throne in 806) ordered that the inhabitants of the country should plant two feet in every acre with mulberry trees.f The first Emperor of the dynasty of Song (who began to ■reign about the year 960) published a decree forbidding his subjects to cut down the mulberry trees.f

By all these means, according to the testimony of M. Stanislas Julien, the business of the fabrication of silk became general in China. This great empire soon furnished its neighbours with this precious textile material, and created for its own profit a very important branch of commerce.

It was forbidden, under pain of death, to export from China the silkworm's eggs, or to furnish the necessary information in the art of obtaining the textile material. The manufactured article only could be sold out of the empire. It was thus that the Asiatic nations very soon understood silk \ and that in many of their cities they applied themselves to weaving stufis of this precious substance. The carpets and dyed stuffs of Babylon, mixed with gold and silk, enjoyed in ancient times an unparalleled renown. China was not, however, the only country that then furnished silk to the towns of Asia Minor. At a very distant period India sent by her caravans very considerable quantities of it. M. Emile Blanchard (of the Institute) remarks, however, that the tissues of India must be made of a different silk from that of China, that is to say, of a silk of some of those Bovibyces of which the public has been told so much of late years, and of which we shall have soon to speak.

Silk commanded for centuries a prodigiously high price. In the time of Alexander its value in Greece was exactly its own weight in gold, and so it was very parsimoniously employed in silk tissues. These were so transparent that women who wore them were scarcely covered. Silk was unknown to the Romans before Julius Csesar. It was to him that Rome owed its acquaintance with this new material. He introduced it, moreover, in a singularly magnificent manner. One day, at a fete given in the Colosseum — a combat of animals and gladiators — the people saw the coarse tent of cloth, intended to keep -off the rays of the sun, replaced by a magnificent covering of Oriental silk. • They murmured at this gorgeous prodigality, but declared

" Annales de la Dynastie des Wei." t " Annales de la Dynastie des Thang," X " II istoire de la Dynastie des Song."

2l6 THE INSECT WORLD.

Caesar a great man. The introduction of silk among the Romans was the signal for luxurious expenditure. The patricians made a great display with their silk cloaks of incalculable value; so that, from the time of Tiberius, the Senate felt itself called upon to forbid the use of silk garments to men. Examples of simplicity are sometimes set in high places; thus, the Emperor Aurelian refused to the Empress Severina so costly a dress.

The commerce in silk bore doubly hard upon Europe, both on account of the value of the material and of the great use which was made of it. Persia was the emporium, and had the monopoly of this merchandise. The Emperor Justinian I., who reigned at Constantinople from A.D. 527 to 56^, tried all the means within his power of freeing his States from this ruinous tyranny, when a circumstance occurred, very fortunately for the national commerce, which brought about the introduction into Europe of sericulture, or the cultivation of silk. Two monks of the order of St. Basil, in their ardour for the propagation of the faith, had pushed forwards into China. There they had been initiated into the operations which furnished the fabric so highly prized. On their return to Constantinople, and hearing of the project that Justinian entertained of depriving the Persians of the monopoly in silk, the two monks proposed to the Emperor to enrich his state by introducing the art of fabricating this material. The proposition was greedily accepted, and the two monks returned again to China, with the object of procuring the eggs of the insect. Having arrived at the end of their journey, they succeeded in getting possession of a quantity of silkworms' eggs. They hid them between the knots of their sticks, and started back to their native country, without being once interfered with. Two years afterwards they re-entered Constantinople with their precious booty.* The larvae were fed on mulberry leaves. Immediately afterwards began the rearing of the worms and the preparation of the silk, according to the instructions given by these courageous travellers. The first broods succeeded perfectly, and so plantations of mulberry trees were seen to multiply and spread through the whole extent of the Eastern Empire. It was, above all, in Southern Greece that this branch of industry assumed an immense importance. It was then the Pelopon-

According to M. de Gasparin, author of an excellent "Essai sur I'Histoire de I'Introduction des Vers a Sole en Europe" (Paris, in 8vo, 1841), it was not into China, but only into Tartary, to Serinda, that the two monks went in search of the silkworms' eggs (pp. 37 — 39). It must be supposed that the eggs did not hatch for two years, being in such interesting company.

LnpiboPTERA. 2\y

nesus lost Its old name, and was called the Morea, from the Latin

name for "mnlbeny," morns. '^

Constantinople and Greece, during centuries, furnished the whole of Europe with silkworms. This diffusion, however, was effected very slowly. The Greeks attached great importance to retaining the •monopoly, and the emperor Justinian had caused to be established at Constantinople itself silk manufactories, where the most skilful artificers of Asia, who were forbidden to reveal the various processes to strangers, worked. Towards the beginning of the eighth century the Arabs introduced

'the silkworm into Spain. But this industry remained confined within narrow limits. It was in fact not till after the twelfth century that sericulture began to spread throughout Europe. Roger, King of the Two Sicilies, possessing a navy that commanded the Mediterranean, employed it chiefly in making excursions and conquests. He ravaged Greece, and, not satisfied with the booty he carried away from that unfortunate country, wished still further to deprive them, for the good of his own kingdom, of the silk monopoly, the source of their riches. Roger carried away into Sicily and Naples a great number of prisoners, amongst whom were some weavers and men who had devoted themselves to the rearing of silkworms. He established these workmen in houses adjoining his own palace at Palermo. There they dyed the silk of different colours, and mixed it with gold, pearls, and precious stones.

From Sicily the art of preparing silk spread over the rest of Italy. In 1204 the workers in silk constituted themselves into a syndicate at Florence. It is not, however, till 1423 — more than two hundred years after the introduction of this branch of industry into Italy — that we find the first mention of the cultivation of the mulberry tree in Tuscany. In 1440 each Tuscan peasant was forced to plant at least five mulberry trees on the land he cultivated. In 1474 the commerce in silk fabrics with all parts of the world had become extremely prosperous at Florence. In 13 14 the Venetian manufactures began to assume much importance. Three thousand workers in silk were then established in Venice.

Without dwelling longer on the propagation of the silk trade in Italy, let us pass on to its establishment in France. It was in 1340 that some French gentlemen, who had stayed some time in Naples, planted in Avignon the first mulberry trees.t According to Olivier

Page 36 of 88