BinECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 333 



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

 nufactured ; and it was from thence that the ancients 

 obtained 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 w ith the leaves of the green willow, 

 until it burst with fat^; 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 pupa of a large horned caterpillar'^. Nor was the 

 mode of producing and manufacturing this precious ma- 

 terial known to Europe until long after the Christian 

 EBra, being first learnt about the year 550 by two monks, 

 who procured in India the e^gs of the silk- worm moth, 

 with whichj concealing them in hollow canes, they 

 hastened to Constantinople, w here they speedily mul- 

 tiplied, and were subsequently introduced into Italy, 

 of which country silk was long a peculiar and staple 

 commodity. It was not cultivated in France until the 

 time of Henry the Fourth, who, considering- that mul- 

 berries grew in his kingdom as well as in lialy, re- 

 solved, in opposition to the opinion of Sully, to attempt 

 introducing it, and fully succeeded. 



The whole of the silk produced in Europe, and the 

 greater proportion of that manufactured in China^is ob- 



* Pausania?, quoted by Goldsmith, vi, 80. 



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



•^ Aristot. uM supra. He does not expressly say the pupa, but this we 

 must suppose. The larva he means could not be the common .«ilk.-A\oiiiij 

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



