DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 333 



books%) one of the chief objects of cultivation and manu- 

 facture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature 



" — set to work millions of spinning worms. 

 That in tlieir green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk 

 To deck her sous V' 



she was conferring ujion them a benefit scarcely inferior 

 to that consequent upon the gift of wool to the fleecy race, 

 or a fibrous rind to the flax or hemp plants ; and that 

 mankind is not under much less obligation to Pamphila, 

 who, according to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the 

 art of unwindino- and weavino- silk, than to the inventors 

 of the spinning of those products '=. 



It seems to have been in Asia that silk was first ma- 

 nufactured ; and it was from thence that the ancients ob- 

 tained it, calling it, from the name of the country whence 

 it was supposed to be brought, Sericum. Of its origin 

 they were in a great measure ignorant, some supposing 

 it to be the entrails of a spider-like insect with eight legs, 

 which was fed for four years upon a kind of paste, and 

 then with the leaves of the green willow, until it burst 

 with faf"; others, that it was the produce of a worm 

 which built clay nests and collected wax^; Aristotle, 

 with more truth, that it was unwound from the jmpa of 

 a large horned caterpillar ^ Nor was the mode of pro- 



" Colebrook in Asiatic Researches, v. 61. '' Milton's Comus. 



" Hist. Animal. I. v. c, 19. A French gentleman, M. Vaucanson, 

 has invented a mill for unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm. 

 Scott's Visit to Paris, 4th ed. .304. 



■^ Pausanias, quoted by Goldsmith, vi. 80. 



" Pliny Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 22. 



f Aristot. ul)i supr. He does not expressly say ihejnipa, but this we 

 must suppose. The larva he means could not be the conuuon silk- 

 worm, since he describes it as large, and having as it were horns. 



