138 



INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY. 



Our space forbids us to enter into these details, however 

 instructive or interesting they might prove; hut we should he 

 inexcusahle, did we pass by in silence the effects which the 

 labours of one insect of this order has produced, and is still 

 producing, on the employments and habits of many hundred 

 thousands of human beings. We allude, of course, to the 

 Silkworm-moth [Bomhyx mori, Fig. 125) whose larva [Fig. 

 123) forms the cocoons from which silk is manufactured. 



^m. 



Fig. 123.— Silkworm. 



There was a time when this article, now so abundant, was 

 valued in Rome at its weight in gold,* and the Emperor 

 Aurelian refused his empress a robe of silk because of its dear- 

 ness. At that very period the Chinese peasantry, amounting 

 in some of the provinces to millions in number, were clothed 

 with this material; and both there and in India it has formed, 

 from time immemorial, one of the chief objects of cultivation 



l"ig. 124.— Chuvsalis 

 OF Silkworm. 



Fig. i as. —Silkworm Moth. 

 * From Kirbj and Spence, Intr. vol. i. page 331. 



