2 SILKWORMS. 



we may say with certainty that the progenitors of all the silkworms 

 now under man's care came originally from the East ; and all 

 traditions point to China as the country where the insect was first 

 domesticated, and whence it has spread, till its cultivation now 

 employs thousands upon thousands of persons, men, women, 

 and children, in very varied and widely distant parts of 

 Asia, Europe, and America. That it should have attracted 

 attention at a very early age, in those countries in which it was 

 indigenous, is not at all to be wondered at, for the beautiful con- 

 trast of the silken cocoons entangled amongst the dark foliage of 

 the mulberry trees, could hardly fail to appeal to the sensibilities 

 of the inhabitants of those districts, even if, as may have been the 

 case, the cocoons were not at that time quite so beautiful as they 

 are now. But it is scarcely likely that the mere appearance of 

 these " things of beauty ' : would convey any suggestion of the 

 possibility of utilising them in human economy, at least until men 

 had become familiarised with the use of textile fabrics composed 

 of other materials. 



As China seems to have been the cradle of the silk manufacture, 

 and the native country of the silkworm, so it is to the Chinese 

 that we must look for the earliest accounts of the insect and its 

 cultivation ; and we find, accordingly, that that ancient people 

 possess a tradition which professes to detail the discovery of the 

 material and the origin of the manufacture. They have an 

 ancient book called the " Silkworm Classic," which contains an 

 account of a certain empress, the wife of the celebrated Hwang-te, 

 who is said to have flourished about 2,600 years B.C. This 

 lady, whose name was Se-ling-she, is said to have been the first to 

 undertake the trouble of rearing silkworms, and the account pro- 

 ceeds to state that she was induced to take this step by her hus- 

 band, who was anxious that, after all the schemes he had himself 

 undertaken for the benefit of his people, his wife also should do 

 something to prove herself a benefactress to her race, so that 

 their names might together be handed down with glorification to 

 a grateful posterity. Accordingly she undertook the task, and in 

 concert with her husband, who apparently had beforehand some 

 suspicion of the nature of the advantage that might be reaped, 

 was led thereby to the discovery of the uses to which the silk 

 might be put, and to the consequent invention of garments com- 

 posed of the newly-discovered material. 



If any reliance could be placed on this date, then the silkworm 

 would by this time have been bred by mankind generation after 

 generation, for a period of some 4,500 years. But whether this 

 be the exact date or not, certain it is that its cultivation has been 



