SILK-WORM. 319 



spider, which was fed for four years with paste, and 

 then with the leaves of the green-willow, till it burst 

 with fat, — and others that it was the produce of a 

 worm which built nests of clay and collected wax. 

 The insect was at length spread into Persia; and 

 eggs were afterwards, at the instance of the Emperor 

 Justinian, concealed in hollow canes by two monks, 

 and coveyed to the isle of Cos. This emperor, in 

 the sixth century, caused them to be introduced into 

 Constantinople, and made an object of public utility. 

 They were thence successively cultivated in Greece, in 

 Arabia, in Spain, in Italy, in France, and in all places 

 where any hope could be indulged of their succeed- 

 ing. In America, the culture of the silk-worm was 

 introduced into Virginia in the time of James I., who 

 himself composed a book of instructions on the sub- 

 ject, and caused mulberry trees and silk-worm's eggs 

 to be sent to the colony. In Georgia, also, lands 

 were granted on condition of planting one hundred 

 white mulberry-trees on every ten acres of cleared 

 land.* 



The growth of the silk-worm has also been tried, 

 but with no great success, in this country. Evelyn 

 computed that one mulberry-tree would feed as many 

 silk-worms annually as would produce seven pounds 

 of silk. " According to that estimate," says Barham'f, 

 " the two thousand trees already planted in Chelsea 

 Park (which take up one-third of it) will make 

 14,0001bs. weight of silk; to be commonly worth but 

 twenty shillings a pound, those trees must make 

 £14,000 per annum." During the last century, some 

 French refugees in the south of Ireland made con- 

 siderable plantations of the mulberry, and had begun 



* North American Review, Oct. 1828, p. 449. 

 t Essay on the Silk-Worm, p 95. London, 1719. 



