| SILK AND SILKWORMS. 93

SILK AND SILKWORMS.

insignificant agents. Those numerous la- goon islands, which glitter like gems on the bosom of the great Southern Ocean, -are entirely raised by the travail of diminutive gelatinous insects, the coral-forming polypi; and those treacherous |reefs, springing from almost fathomless depths, and ex- tending sometimes for hundreds of miles in one con- tinuous direction, in the same vast desert of water, owe | their origin likewise to the operations of similar inde- 'fatigable creatures. And it is a no less wonderful fact, to quote the language of a practical writer on the manu- facture of silk, that “the thick velvet and stiff brocade, the thin gauze, and the delicate blonde, should all be formed from the product of the labours of a little worm.” We have no sufficient data for estimating, even approxi- mately, the amount of raw silk yearly produced in the world; but perhaps there is no exaggeration in saying, that it far exceeds in weight the total yield of the pre- cious metals within the same given period. Be that, however, as it may, a few years since the quantity which was annually worked up in this country alone equalled the enormous sum of 1700 tons. Now, the consumption is greater, and is, moreover, steadily on the increase. Thus already, upwards of fourteen millions of animated crea- tures annually live and die to supply this little corner of the world with a single article of luxury. “If astonish- ment be excited at this fact,” remarks the writer before mentioned, “let us extend our view into China, and survey the dense population of its widely-spread region, who, from the emperor on his throne to the peasant in his lowly hut, are indebted for their clothing to the labour of the silkworm.”

The honour of having been the first people to utilize the bombykia, or the soft, golden-coloured filaments pro- duced from the bombyx or silkworm is, by universal con- sent, ascribed to the Chinese; in whose country, according to their own documentary evidence, the art of spinning | and weaving the threads into a cloth, has been prosecuted for upwards of 4500 years. It was practised, if not in- vented, by the empress See-ling-shee, the consort of Hoang-tee, who is said to have flourished 2700 B.c., and whose dominions for iong subsequent ages were univer- sally known as “the kingdom of silk.” Owing to the traditional policy of the Chinese rulers to restrain rather than encourage a spirit for commercial enterprise amongst their people, the outer world long remained in ignorance, | not only of the art of sericulture, but of the very existence of the insect upon which it depended. Silken tissues of the lightest description occasionally found their way, | by slow stages, across the Asiatic continent into the domains of eastern and southern Europe, where they excited, as a matter of course, the admiration and cupidity of the most opulent and powerful princes. The earliest | allusion to those wonderful fabrics may be detected in the curious myth of Danaé, whois said to have been enveloped at times “in a shower of gold;” in other words, that celebrated beauty was wrapped in a bespangled crape- |vesture of Celestial origin. Some mythologists, too, | have entertained the idea that the golden fleece which | Jason and his adventurous Argonauts carried off from | Colchis was a large skein of raw silk in the hank, which

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S57, HE most astonishing results in nature are | si, not unfrequently produced by the most |

mighf figuratively be termed a fleece, because it was to be twisted into thread and interwoven with cloth. These legendary stories, however, are but the poetical lispings of traders and merchantmen in the infancy of commerce.

It was not until the Augustan age that the Romans fully comprehended the properties of serieum or silk, which they so named from Serica, the common designa- tion of China. The fleecy substance was long supposed to be an extraneous or parasitical growth on certain trees or plants peculiar to that far distant country. Nor when this popular delusion was exploded, and the demand for the textures, as a fashionable luxury, was yearly increas- ing, were any corresponding efforts made to introduce into any part of the Roman empire, then extending from “ the utmost bounds of the West” to the Caucasian mountains in the East, the economical insect itself; or even to ac- quire the simple art of working up its invaluable produce. For their silken habiliments, the stately dames of Rome were exclusively indebted to the keener-witted inhabitants of Cos, an island off the western coast of Asia Minor; and for which novel manufactures they were constrained to pay the most exorbitant sums. The splendour of those ‘Coan vestments” passed into a proverb. Pliny the elder reports that they “ were so fine as to be trans- parent—covering, yet revealing, the beautiful proportions of woman ;” and that they “ were sometimes dyed purple, and enriched with stripes of gold.” Nor was the use of them restricted to the weaker sex. Very much to the disgust of the old naturalist, the grave and moneyed citi- zens also adopted them. “So greatly have manners de- generated in our day,” is his complaint, “ that, so far from wearing a breast-plate of brass, a silken vesture is even found to be too heavy for them.” And again, when speaking of the various kinds of chaplets then in vogue, he particularizes those intended for presentation, and which were formed of divers-coloured silks, and perfumed with the most costly unguents. “Such is the pitch,” he exclaims “to which the luxuriousness of our women has at last arrived!” Had his lot been cast in a later age, he would have joined, too, no doubt, in that louder wail of execration which was raised against the versatile Heliogabalus, for the commission of numberless follies and misdemeanours ; of which none, in the estimation of his people, was greater than his habit of clothing himself in a whole suit of silk. Mankind in a civilized condition appears to have been much about the same in all times. Upon the introduction of silken tissues here, during the age of the Plantagenets, puissant knights vied with their wives and daughters in the extravagance of such apparel. Gentlemen as well as ladies indulged their fancies with robes of extraordinary dimensions; and which were de- vised, furbelowed, and otherwise adorned, as Harding, the rhyming chronicler, bears witness, in the most fantastical manner :—

Cut-worke was great both in court and towns, Both in men’s hoods, and also in their gowns ;

in fact, we have seen contemporary drawings of domestic scenes in that age, in which it is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to discriminate between the sexes of those votaries of fashion! The relaxing climate of Italy in summer-tide occasioned a very general adoption of the light Coan vestment by its wealthier inhabitants. In these higher latitudes, English gallants had no such excuse. But folly is epidemical as wellas endemical ; it is contracted in the one place, or it rises spontaneously in the