18 HISTORY OF INSECTS. 



Asia. According to Latreille the city of Turfan, in Little 

 Bucharia, was for a long period the rendezvous of the ca- 

 ravans coming from the east, and the chief depot for the 

 silk trade of China. It was the metropolis of Seres in Up- 

 per Asia, or of the Serica of Ptolemy. The expedition of 

 Alexander into Persia and India first introduced the know- 

 ledge of silk to the Grecians, in the year 350 B.C., and with 

 the increase of wealth and luxury in the Grecian court the 

 demand for silk was prodigiously augmented. Thence it 

 passed to Rome, probably about the time of Julius or 

 Augustus Caesar, the Emperor Heliogabalus, about the year 

 220, being the first who wore a robe entirely of silk. Until 

 A.D. 550, silk in its raw state only had been sent out of Chi- 

 na, the exportation of insects being prohibited on pain of 

 death, and up to this period the real nature of the material 

 was unknown. Its introduction into Europe is said to have 

 been accomplished in the following manner. 



Two Persian monks having been employed as missiona- 

 ries in some of the Christian churches, which, according to 

 Cosmas, were already established in different parts of India, 

 had penetrated into China. There, amidst their pious oc- 

 cupations, they viewed with a curious eye the common dress 

 of the Chinese, the manufacture of silk, and the myriads of 

 silk-worms, whose education, either on trees or in houses, 

 had once been considered the labour of queens. They 

 soon discovered that it was impracticable to transplant the 

 short-lived insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny 

 might be preserved, and multiplied in a distant climate. 

 They observed with interest the labours of the little creature, 

 and strove to make themselves acquainted with the manual 

 arts employed in working up its productions into so great a 

 variety of fabrics. On their return to the West, instead of 

 communicating the knowledge thus acquired to their own 

 countrymen, they proceeded on to Constantinople. The 



