LEPIDOPTERA. 2IQ 



on the death of that king. It received a fresh impulse under Colbert, 

 the great minister, who succeeded in creating the spirit of commerce 

 and trade in France. New manufactories were established, and 

 plantations of mulberry trees formed in many of the provinces. All 

 this progress was suddenly brought to a standstill by the iniquitous 

 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which deprived France of her 

 leading commercial men. Driven from their own country, the 

 Protestant families of the Cevennes established abroad silk manufac- 

 tories, the fabrics of which rivalled those of French production. 



In the eighteenth century the intendants of the provinces tried, 

 but with very slight success, to give a fresh impetus to sericulture 

 in France. The Abbe Boissier de Sauvages published, about 1760, 

 some works, which prove him to have been a patient observer, an 

 accurate reasoner, and a clever rearer of silkworms. Boissier de 

 Sauvages is the father of modern silk-culture. During the first 

 Revolution, men's minds were occupied with graver subjects than the 

 cultivation of the mulberry tree. But, on the return of peace, they got 

 to work again on all sides. In 1808, the minister Chaptal estimated 

 the weight of the cocoon harvest at between five or six thousand 

 kilogrammes; whilst the invention of the Jacquard loom gave an 

 immense impulse to the weaving of silk stuffs. Amongst those who 

 introduced and benefited the art of sericulture, we must not forget 

 Dandolo. Dandolo, who was born at Venice in 1758, and died in 

 1819, was the first who, at the beginning of this century, applied 

 himself seriously to the amelioration of the processes employed in 

 the cultivation of silk. He endeavoured to regulate the temperature, 

 to introduce more order into the distribution of the food to the 

 worms, to have more spacious premises, and to have these properly 

 ventilated. 



Now we are on this subject, we must mention the names of those 

 who at the present day have rendered important services to seri- 

 culture such as M. Camille Beauvais, who raised silkworm rearing 

 from the inactivity into which it had been plunged ; M. Eugene 

 Robert, who founded in the south of France the first successful silk- 

 worm nursery ; M. Guerin-Meneville, who has devoted his life to the 

 study of the same question, and to whom Europe owes the introduc- 

 tion and the acclimatisation of some species which will render us, 

 perhaps, one day very great services ; and lastly, M. Robinet, who 

 has elucidated several practical questions in the art of sericulture. 

 In bringing to a close this rapid historical epitome, we will state that 

 France consumes annually 30,000 kilogrammes of silkworms' eggs, 

 each kilogramme being at the present time worth from 300 to 500 



