232 MOTH. 



may be found in the Cyclopaedia of Mr. Chambers 

 and many other similar publications, and is nearly 

 as follows. 



The art of manufacturing Silk is said to have 

 been first invented in the island of Cos, by a 

 woman of the name of Pamphilis the daughter of 

 Platis. The discovery was not long unknown to 

 the Romans. Silk was brought to them from 

 Serica, where the insect itself was a native; but 

 so far were they from profiting by the discovery, 

 that they could not be induced to believe so fine 

 a thread to be the work of an insect, and formed 

 many chimerical cpnjectures of their own on the 

 subject. Silk was a very scarce article among 

 them for many ages: it was even sold weight for 

 weight with gold ; insomuch that Vopiscus in- 

 forms us that the Emperor Aurelian, who died 

 A. D. 275, refused the Empress his wife a robe of 

 silk, which she earnestly solicited, merely on ac- 

 count of its dearness. Others however, with greater 

 probability, assert that it was known at Rome so 

 early as the reign of Tiberius, about A. D. 17. 

 Galen, who lived about the year of our Lord 173, 

 speaks of the rarity of Silk, being no where then 

 but at Rome, and there only among the rich. 

 Heliogabalus the Emperor, who died A. D. 220, 

 is said by some to have, been the first person that 

 wor$ a holosericum, i. e. a garment entirely of 

 silk. The Greeks of the army of Alexander the 

 Great are said to have been the first who brought 

 wrought silk from Persia into Greece, about 323 

 years before Christ - 3 but the manufacture of it was 



