666 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



invention. This date carries us back 5,265 years. They are said to 

 have employed the silk of wild caterpillars, and to have spun a sort 

 of floss. At that time they knew nothing of raising the worm or of 

 winding the cocoon into skeins. 



This double industry appears to have arisen 2,650 years before our 

 era, or 4,515 years ago, through the efforts of an empress named Si- 

 lins-Chi. To her is attributed the invention of silk stuffs. You will 

 not be surprised to see that the fabrication of silks should have a 

 woman as its inventor. 



Si-ling-Chi, in creating this industry, which was to be so immense- 

 ly developed, enriched her country. Her countrymen seem to have 

 understood the extent of the benefit, and to have been not ungrateful. 

 They placed her among their deities, under the name of Sein-Thsan, 

 two words that, according to M. Stanislas Julien, signify the first who 

 raised the silk-worm. And still, in our time, the empresses of China, 

 with their maids-of-honor, on an appointed day, offer solemn sacrifices 

 to Sien-Thsan. They lay aside their brilliant dress, renounce their 

 sewing, their embroidery, and their habitual work, and devote them- 

 selves to raising the silk-worm. In their sphere they imitate the Em- 

 peror of China, who, on his part, descends once a year from his throne 

 to trace a furrow with the plough. 



The Chinese are an eminently practical race. No sooner did they 

 understand that silk would be to them a source of wealth, than they 

 strove to obtain a monopoly of it. They established guards along 

 their frontier true custom-house officers with orders to prevent the 

 going out of seeds of the mulberry or of the silk-worm. Death was 

 pronounced against him who attempted to transport from the country 

 these precious elements which enriched the empire. So, during more 

 than twenty centuries, we were completely ignorant of the source of 

 these marvellous goods the brilliant tissues manufactured from silk. 

 For a long time we believed them to be a sort of cotton ; some sup- 

 posed even that they were gathered in the fields, and were the webs 

 of certain gigantic spiders. The price of silk continued so high that 

 the Emperor Aurelian, after his victories in the Orient, refused his 

 wife a silken robe, as being an object of immoderate luxury, even for 

 a Roman empress. 



A monopoly founded on a secret ought necessarily to come to an 

 end, particularly when the secret is known by several millions of men. 

 But, to export the industry of Si-ling-Chi, it was needful to risk life in 

 deceiving the custom-house officer. It w r as a woman who undertook 

 this fine contraband stroke. Toward the year 140 before our era, a 

 princess of the dynasty of Han, affianced to a King of Khokan, 

 learned that the country in which she was destined to live had neither 

 the mulberry nor the silk-worm. To renounce the worship of Sein- 

 Thsan, and doubtless also to do without the beautiful stuffs, so dear to 

 the coquette, appeared to her impossible. So she did not hesitate to use 



