SILKWORMS. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE HISTORY OF SILK CULTURE. 



" PATIENCE and perseverance turn mulberry leaves into the 

 silken robes of a queen." So runs an ancient Eastern proverb, 

 which, if we strip it of its metaphorical signification, and regard it 

 simply as a compendious method of stating what results when a 

 certain series of natural processes is supplemented by the industry 

 and artistic skill of human kind, may be appropriately placed at 

 the head of our first chapter, as indicating the nature of the facts 

 this little volume is intended to detail and illustrate. The for- 

 tunes of the silkworm and the mulberry tree are indissolubly 

 associated, and when man steps in and patronizes the union 

 between the two, there results an industry which has for ages 

 been the support of millions of his race, and has supplied him 

 with the most gorgeous of all those fabrics with which it has ever 

 been his delight to adorn his person. 



If we enquire who first kept silkworms, and whether they were 

 kept for pleasure or for profit, we shall find that, while it is easy 

 enough to give a traditional reply which has all the sanction of a 

 very hoary antiquity, it is not by any means so easy to say how 

 much reliance may be placed on this, and how far it represents 

 actual history ; for the silkworm is now so entirely a domesti- 

 cated animal, that, like the dog and some other of man's dumb 

 friends, it is not met with in the wild state, at least in the form in 

 which it is reared, and but for man's care would, in the course of 

 a twelvemonth, disappear from the face of the earth. So long 

 has it been a companion of man, that the history of the first 

 reclamation from the wild state of the " dog of insects," as it has 

 been termed by one writer, is mixed up with myth and fable, and 

 well-nigh lost in the mists of antiquity. But, notwithstanding this, 



