4 SILKWORMS. 



As examples of the laws made to regulate and encourage the 

 industry, as well as illustrations of its antiquity in China, the 

 following may be cited. On one occasion, about ten centuries 

 B.C., an order was issued by the officer who adjusted the price of 

 horses, forbidding the people to rear a second brood of silkworms 

 in one season. And lest it should not be quite clear to the 

 ordinary intellect, what connection there could be between horses 

 and silkworms, to justify such an edict emanating from such a 

 source, we are kindly informed that horses and silkworms were 

 considered by the astrologers to belong to the same constellation, 

 and that therefore they must be of the same origin (this was 

 Evolution with a vengeance !), and that, as it was unlikely that two 

 things of the same nature should prosper at the same time, the 

 rearing of a second brood of silkworms must be forbidden, lest it 

 should be of some disadvantage to the horses ! 



Again, coming down to later times, though still before the 

 Christian era, we read as follows : " In the first month of spring, 

 orders were issued to the forester not to cut down the mulberry 

 trees ; and when the cooing doves were observed fluttering with 

 their wings, and the crested jays alighting upon their mulberry 

 trees, the people were to prepare their trays, frames, etc., for the 

 purpose of rearing the silkworms." What a pity it is that the 

 legal English of to-day is not as high-flown and poetical as the 

 Chinese of two thousand years ago ! The silkworm season seems 

 to have been a kind of Lent, for again we read : " In the spring 

 season, when the empress and her ladies had fasted, they pro- 

 ceeded to the east, and personally engaged in picking mulberry 

 leaves ; on this occasion the married and single ladies were 

 forbidden to wear their ornaments, and the usual employments 

 of females were lessened, in order to encourage their attention to 

 the silkworms. When the rearing of the silkworms was completed, 

 the cocoons were divided and the silk weighed, each person 

 being rewarded according to her labour, in order to provide 

 dresses for the celestial and ancestorial sacrifices : in all this none 

 dared indulge in indolence." 



Many other peculiar arrangements might be cited, but these 

 are sufficient to show with what care this important industry was 

 fostered in the Celestial Empire. But at the same time, with the 

 exclusiveness which has always characterised this peculiar people, 

 the Chinese adopted the strictest possible precautions to prevent 

 the rest of the world from profiting by their valuable discovery, 

 and to keep the monopoly of the manufacture ; and to so great an 

 extent was this carried that it was death to export from China 

 silkworms' eggs, or to supply any such information as would 



