1 76 TREATISE UPON THE 



gathered. The statements of the ancients relative to that 

 kind of worms, their extraordinary multiplication in the 

 years they have been spoken of, give us the right to 

 conclude that if they yielded some silk, in other years, it 

 was in very small quantities. Let us suppose it was the 

 same with the silk worms of the island of Cos, and it will 

 be very easy to explain why silk was so rare and precious. 

 To return to the caterpillars of the cypress, fir, ash, and 

 oak trees, from which the inhabitants of the island of Cos 

 obtained their silk, we have all these trees in France. The 

 caterpillars of a tree in one country are the same in all 

 other countries. Would it be badly imagined to draw an 

 inference from that fact ? Would there not be some room 

 to make it ? All that our gratitude can dare for a benefactor 

 whose name will ever be in our mouth, and upon bur lips, 

 is, to relate that which is practised in China, and, for our 

 justification, to rely upon his wisdom to excuse the anxiety 

 to make use of it in the proper time and manner. We ask 

 the favor, that this notice and all others we may take the 

 liberty to offer to him, may only be communicated to the 

 public as materials belonging to the subject under examina- 

 tion. Even if the deceased father D'Incarville, had not 

 made researches and experiments upon the silk worms, of 

 which we are about to speak, we would never have dared 

 to risk ourselves, by saying any thing upon the testimony 

 of books alone ; but this respectable and learned missiona- 

 ry, of whom so many excellent memoirs have been lost or 

 buried, having undertaken to reply upon this subject, to the 

 questions that the Minister and several learned men have ad- 

 dressed to him, he set himself to work, made experiments, 

 and his journal, worthy in all respects of his sagacity and 

 exactitude, has fortunatelv fallen into our hands. We cannot 



