STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 217 



SILK CULTURE. 



AN ADDRESS PREPARED FOR THE PIONEER "SILK-GROWERS' ASSOCIATION. 



AND DELIVERED BEFORE THE STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 



EY INVITATION, SEPTEMBER TENTH, EIGHTEEN HUNDRED 



AND SIXTY-NINE. 



By Rev. I. S. DIEHL. 



Gentlemen and Members of the Society : 



In compliance with your honored invitation to address this association 

 on the silk interests, especially as seen and learned by me in my travels 

 and observations in Asia and Europe, I come to add my mite and contri- 

 butions of this ancient, profitable and promising industry of the Oriental 

 and Old World to the many and multiplying sources of wealth of this 

 Occidental and Golden State, which 1 delight to honor as the El Dorado 

 of my adoption and choice; and here it may not be amiss, but well, to 

 give a brief summary of the history and progress of this old but here 

 new and rising industry on this coast, and encourage, as far as possible, 

 the pioneers now enlisted. Dean Swift says, " he who makes two blades 

 of grass to grow where one grew before, is a benefactor," and so may 

 and will you be hailed in giving new industries and sources of wealth, 

 labor, comfort and blessings to your State and people. We are at once 

 carried back some three thousand four hundred }'ears or more to the 

 "Flowery Kingdom" or Empire of China, and in its antiquities find the 

 first and best accounts of silk, the silkworm and mulberry tree, rearing 

 silk manufactures and their productions, with cuts, drawings, diagrams 

 and pictures quite amusing and interesting. The history of silk culture 

 is lost in antiquity; but by oldest writers — Aristotle, Horace, Virgil, 

 Ovid, Pliny — and general consent, China is generally conceded to be the 

 home and originator of this industry, four thousand five hundred and 

 sixty-seven years ago, or two thousand six hundred and ninety-eight 

 before the Christian era. The Emperor Haw-Hi has the honor, in the 

 Chinese annals, of employing silk in the manufacture of musical instru- 

 ments three thousand four hundred j'ears before Christ, called Ci. The 

 first silk tissues are said to have been invented by the Empress Ho-Sing- 

 Chi, which places her among the Chinese divinities, under the name of 

 San Thson, or First Promoter of silk industry, and whether this Chinese 

 Empress is a myth or not, the Chinese Empress and people still offer 

 annually solemn sacrifices to her memory ; and one of the many interest- 

 ing ceremonies to be seen is for the Empress to visit the silkworm 



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