BOMBICID^ — SILK-WORM MOTHS. 23t 



to not even feel ashamed to wear garments of this mate- 

 rial.^ 



The mode of producing and manufacturing silk was not 

 known to Europe until long after the Christian era, being 

 first learned about the year 555 by two Persian monks, who, 

 under the encouragement of the Emperor Justinian, pro- 

 cured in India the eggs of the Silk-worm Moth, with which, 

 concealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Con- 

 stantinople. They also brought with them instructions for 

 hatching the eggs, rearing and feeding the worms, and 

 drawing, spinning, and working the silk.'^ 



Erom Constantinople, the culture of the Silk-worm spread 

 over Greece, so that in less than five centuries that portion 

 of this country, hitherto called the Peloponnesus, changed 

 its denomination into that of Morea, from the immense 

 plantations of the Morus alba, or white mulberry.^ Large 

 manufactories were set up at Athens, Thebes, and Corinth. 

 The Yenetians, soon after this, commencing a commerce 

 with the Grecians, supplied all the western parts of Europe 

 with silks for many centuries. Several kinds of modern 

 silk manufiictures, such as damasks, velvets, satins, etc., 

 were as yet unknown. 



About the year 1130, Roger II., King of Sicily, having 

 conquered the Peloponnesus, transported the Silk-worms 

 and such as cultivated them to Palermo and to Calabria. 

 Such was the success of the speculation in Calabria, that it 

 is doubtful whether, even at the present moment, it does not 

 produce more silk than the whole of the rest of Italy.* 



By degrees the rest of Italy, as well as Spain, learned 

 from the Sicilians and Calabrians the management of Silk- 

 worms and the working of silk; and at length, during the 

 wars of Charles VIII., in 1499, the French acquired it, by 

 right of neighborhood, and soon large plantations of the 

 mulberry were raised in Provence. Henry I. is reported 



1 Nat. Hist, xi. 22. 



2 Cf. Gibbon's Decl. and Fall of Rom. Em., c. 40. 



3 Some authors, however, assert that the name-was suggested by 

 the resemblance of the Morea to the shape of the mulberry-leaf, a 

 less plausible opinion by far than the former. 



* Thuanus, in contradiction to most other writers, makes the manu- 

 facture of silk to be introduced into Sicily two hundred years later, 

 by Robert the Wise, King of Sicily and Count of Provence. 



21* 



