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94

SILK AND SILKWORMS.

other, just according to the temporary condition of the
‘moral atmosphere. Our medieval ancestors borrowed the
fashion from the ““Flombardynges,” or Knights of Flanders,
who, on high days and festivals, were accustomed to go,
in the language of acontemporary romance, “al schredden
(or clothed) in silk of rich pris.” Poets and satirists here,
as those of Rome in the age of Pliny, were at no loss for
material with which to embellish or eke out their several
pictures of passing events ; and to gibbet for posterity the
effeminacy of the principal actors in them. At the nup-
tials of the Princess Margaret, the daughter of our King
Edward III., to the third Alexander of Scotland, one
thousand English knights appeared in “contoises” or
“quintizes of silk,” so named from the quaint manner in
which such habiliments were cut. Hence Chaucer :—

Wrought was his robe in strange guise,
And all to slyttered for quintize,—

that is, the sleeves and borders of his flowing garment |

were slashed and peaked to his heart’s content, not un-
like the serrated edge of a leaf; which, in fact, it was
sometimes intended to figure.

But to return from this digression. For five centuries
and upwards, after its introduction into Europe, the
Chinese continued to monopolize the trade in raw silk.
It was not until the breaking out of the final war be-
tween the Romans and Persians, in the year 523, that
the former people were compelled to seek their supplies
of Indian produce through some other channel than the
latter, upon whom they had been previously and exclu-
sively dependent. In the matter of silk, which had now
become an indispensable commodity, as well to the im-
perial exchequer as to the higher classes of Rome, the
empire was indebted, not only for a correct knowledge of
its curious origin, but also for the precious Insect pro-

ducing it, to the enterprising spirit of private adventurers.

The political influence and sagacity of a Justinian had
failed to realize this happy result. Two Nestorian monks,
who had carried the banner of the Cross into the far
country of the Seres, brought away with them the true
secret of sericulture. ‘There,’ says Robertson, the
historian, ‘ amidst their pious occupations, they viewed

with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, the |

manufacture of silk, and the myriads of silkworms, whose
education, either on trees or in houses, had once been
considered the labour of queens. They soon discovered
that it was impracticable to transport the short-lived
insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might
be preserved and multiplied in a distant climate.” Those
monks, notwithstanding their Persian nationality, were in-
duced to return to the scene of their missionary labours;
and with much difficulty eluding the vigilant jealousy of
the Chinese, they succeeded in obtaining a quantity of the
ova of the insect, which they concealed in the hollow of
a cane, and thus in safety conveyed the precious burthen
across the Asiatic continent to Constantinople, then the
eastern metropolis of the Romans. The eges were
hatched in the proper season by the warmth of manure,
and the worms were nourished on the leaves of the wild
mulberry-tree. The insects thus produced were the pro-
genitors of all the generations of silkworms which have
since been reared in Europe and the western parts of
Asia; and no subsequent diligence has discovered a
better variety of the worm.

By degrees the education of the insect and the manu-
facture of its produce spread from one extremity of

Europe to the other; from Constantinople to Sicily and
Italy, and thence to France and Spain; in each of which
countries, owing to the geniality of their climates rather
than to the superior skill of their workmen, sericulture
has been followed with much greater success than in our
own. Here its cultivation was impeded at the outset
by the civil war of the Roses; and its vitality all but
extinguished by the sumptuary laws immediately follow-
ing them. By an Act of Parliament passed in the year
1452, a person whose wife wore a silk dress was required
to find a charger for the Government. Hence, half a
century later, an English monarch prided himself upon |
the acquisition of a silken fabric, imported from the
Continent, the exhibition of which in the youth of his,
father would have excited little or no curiosity at all.’
In subsequent times, when other branches of national)
industry had been successfully developed, and the number
of the poorer class in consequence proportionally dimi-|
nished, the high price of labour in this country virtually
precluded its competing with its continental neighbours,
whether in the production or in the fabrication of the,
raw material. In the brightest days of their prosperity,
Spitalfields and Derby lagged far in the wake of Florence)
and Lyons. Nevertheless, for a very long period silk-|
worms have been reared here as objects of curiosity and
amusement. Occasionally, too, a public-spirited and
philanthropical individual, such as the late estimable
Mrs. Whitby, of Newlands, has endeavoured, by example
as well as by precept, to re-introduce amongst us the
culture of the insect, as an equally agreeable and profitable

| occupation for their poorer neighbours; of whose ex-|

perience we shall avail ourselves whilst proceeding to,
explain the general treatment of the creature in the,
several stages of its brief existence.

The bombyx mori, or silkworm of the mulberry-tree, |
belongs to a family of insects of the order lepidoptera,
nocturna, or scaly-winged moths. According to the late,

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EGGS OF SILKWORM.

Count Dandolo, the highest of continental authorities, |

| the caterpillar is, in the first instance, composed of animal, |

silky, and excremental particles; this forms the state of |
the growing caterpillar : in the next stage, it is com-.
posed of animal and silky particles; it is then the mature

PROGRESSIVE GROWTH OF SILKWORM.
caterpillar: and lastly, it is reduced to the animal |
particles alone; and in this state it is termed the chrysalis.
It is about eight weeks arriving at maturity, during which |

period it changes its skin four or five times.

This period