380 Natural' Histofical Collections. 



which it now enriches, and that it was in the reign of Justinian, in the year' 657, 

 that two monks brought fi-om Tartary the eggs of the insect which produces it ; 

 but it is a question whence the mulberry -tree has been obtained, upon whose leaves 

 alone this insect ever lives. It would have been too slow a process to have 

 brought over the seeds or plants at the same time with the eggs : it was neces- 

 sary that the caterpillar, on coming out from its egg, should have a tree ready to 

 receive it. 



M. Mongez has sought to answer this question. He remarks in the first 

 place, that the Greeks were not ignorant of the fact, that silk is the product of an 

 insect, and that this insect lives upon a tree. He refers to a passage in Pliny, 

 whence it results that they collected, in the Isle of Cos, silk produced by the ca- 

 terpillars of the turpentine tree, the cypress, the ash, and the oak,_silk which 

 the abundance and superior quality of that from the mulberry tree have probably 

 caused to be forgotten. He reminds us that, according to the tale of Pyranlus 

 and Thisbe, the white mulberry tree seems not to have been unknown to the an- 

 cients, since it was the blood of Pyramus which turned the white mulberry tree 

 into the purple. 



Arbor ibi, niveis uberrima pomis. 



And again, 



Ardua mortis erat."- 



Arborei fetus aspergine caedis in atram 

 Vertuntur faciem, madefactaque sanguine radix 

 Puniceo tingit pendentia mora colore." 



This conjecture has more verisimilitude, as the scene of this metamorphosis 

 lay near the walls of Babylon, and as, from a word in Pliny, we learn that Assy- 

 ria furnished a precious silk, used by the females.* 



We find also in the Geoponics, a passage of Diophanes, contemporary with 

 Julius CfBsar, where it is saidj that if a mulberry tree be grafted on a white 

 poplar, the berries become white ; and although there is no probability in the 

 assertion, we may at least conclude that white mulberries existed in the time 

 of Diophanes, that is to say, before the Christian era, and in his country, which 

 was Bithynia. The tree might easUy be multiplied in the neighbourhood of 

 Constantinople, where its important properties were known ; but it appears 

 to have been very tardy in dispersing itself. It only became common in the 

 Peloponnesus, as also the silk-worm, about the period of the crusades. Roger, 

 king of Sicily, having become master of a portion of this peninsula, enriched 

 his possessions with these precious productions, and it was from Sicily that the 

 more western countries obtained them by degrees. About this time the Pe- 

 loponnesus began to receive the name of Morea, and this name M. Mongez 

 thinks was rather owing to the numerous plantations of white mulberry trees 

 which grew there, than to its form, similar certainly to the leaf of this tree, 

 but which would have entitled it to the name of Morea long before that period. 

 Others think that Moraea is merely a corruption of Romcea. 

 ( To be continued.) 



• Assyria tamen lombyce adhtw feminis cedimits, Plin. lib. xi. c. 23. Brothier 

 and others think that they have also found, in the 22d chap, a description of 

 the bombyx which produced the Assyrian silk ; but they are in error. This 

 article, taken from Aristotle, lib. v. c. 19. relates only to the bombyx of the 

 Isle of Cos ; it could only be supposed to relate to the Assyrian insect, because 



Pliny, in the commencement of this chapter, speaks of the wasps of Assyria, 

 which make their nests in the ground, and are nothing else than our mason- 



