i3o OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES 



themselves to the manufacture of cloth where- 

 with to cover themselves. But it was to this 

 princess that they owed the useful invention 

 of silk stuffs. Afterwards the empress, named 

 by Chinese authors, according to the order of 

 their dynasties, found an agreeable occupation 

 in superintending the hatching, rearing, and 

 feeding of silkworms, in making silk and working 

 it up when made. There was an enclosure 

 attached to the palace for the cultivation of 

 mulberry trees." Accompanying this descrip- 

 tion is a fanciful picture of the Empress Si-ling- 

 chi and her ladies gathering mulberry leaves for 

 the silkworms, all clad in the most elaborately 

 made and embroidered silken garments ! 



Si-ling-chi was in all probability a mythical 

 person, a Chinese Ceres or goddess of the silk- 

 worm ; her memory is held in great veneration 

 by the Chinese, and special altars have been 

 erected to her. In the olden times, however, it 

 was the custom of the empresses, queens, and 

 wives of the nobles of the land to personally 

 superintend the culture of the silkworm ; and 

 the work was probably undertaken by them in 

 order to set an example of industry to the people, 

 in the same way in which the Chinese emperor 

 at the beginning of each year used with great 

 ceremony to guide the plough with his own 

 imperial hand, and cut the first furrows, and sow 

 the first seeds; so that agriculture might be 

 ennobled and the people encouraged to cultivate 

 the land. Although sericulture is no longer 

 the fashionable pastime for the great ladies of 

 China, in the precincts of the imperial palace 



