CHINESE SILK-LORE. 50 5 



You know so well liow our silk-worms are cultivated that I 

 need not relate the details of the method. In principle there is 

 not much difference between our method and yours ; possibly 

 yours is only a copy of ours, without pretending to possess 

 any novel features. But our system goes back to twenty-seven 

 hundred years before Christ. The queen of the Emperor Hoang- 

 Ti at that time first conceived the idea of raising silk-worms and 

 of making from their production garments with which to clothe 

 the people over whom her august husband ruled.* 



The indention had such a following that it is still spreading 

 through the whole world on a growing scale. Notwithstanding 

 we have the wool and fur of animals, silk still is and always will 

 be an article of luxury that no one who has the means of getting 

 it will do without, f We, who are always grateful to our bene- 

 factors, honor the inventor of the art of silk-culture with a real 

 perpetual cult. Besides the temples which we have erected in all 

 the corners of the empire, her Majesty the Empress goes every 

 year at the hatching season, in person, with all her suite, and in 

 great pomp, to the field of the mulberry, to sacrifice to the goddess 

 who was the queen of the Emperor Hoang-Ti.J After the cere- 

 are used, two of which are placed in the east and two in the west. Music was regarded 

 by the ancient Chinese as an affair of state and religion, as a science revealed from heaven, 

 a ray of the universal harmony emanating from divinity. Celestial forces and virtue were 

 attributed to it. It was to them the science of sciences, the one by which all others were 

 explained, to which they were related and from which they were descended. The modern 

 Chinese have not abandoned their notions, although the sound of their music does not 

 suggest them to Europeans. 



* This celebrated woman, whose name was Loui Tseu, is adored as the goddess of silk. 

 She was born, according to the Chinese historians, 2697 b. c, in the city of Si-Ling. Her 

 husband was the first Chinese legislator, and reigned a hundred years from 2*737 b. c. to 

 2637 b. c. and died at the age of one hundred and twenty-one years. One of his ministers 

 composed the famous Chinese cycle ; another constructed the celestial sphere ; and a third 

 regulated the notes of the gamut, with which he associated a metrical system. The Chinese 

 refer the invention of wagons, bows, spun goods, and bells in short, the origin of civiliza- 

 tion to that period. 



f Mencius, the Chinese philosopher next in esteem after Confucius, said that after fifty 

 years of age one could not keep warm without wearing silk clothing. It is likely that even 

 before the time of Hoang-Ti the Chinese could make cloth of the silk of the wild worms, 

 those that lived on the oak, for example. Another use of silk, which the author does not 

 mention, was in the fabrication of the cords by means of which grand dignitaries received 

 orders to strangle themselves. The messengers, who communicated the sentences to them, 

 besides bearing the order written with the terrible vermilion, were usually instructed to 

 proceed with the execution in case the victim had not courage to perform it himself. On 

 the other hand, the emperor often expressed his satisfaction through gifts of balls of 

 silk ; whence originated the expression to "present the silk " ; and this, being confounded 

 with the sentence-bearing cords, has given rise to some curious mistakes. 



X The calculation of the days for the performance of the traditional sacrifices by the 

 Emperor is one of the principal duties of the astronomers of the observatory at Pekin. 

 Since the ancient formulas no longer suffice for the determination of the dates, the astro- 

 nomical bureau includes several Europeans, who are called assistant astronomers, and are 



