PRODUCTION OF SILK. 137 



simple chloride of lime, being alone sufficient to purify 

 the atmosphere. Open fire places are now disapproved 

 of in France, other systems being adopted. 



SECTION XLIV. 



PRODUCTION AND MANUFACTURE OF SILK IN 

 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. 



CHINA, throughout its whole extent, has been famous 

 for its silk from a very remote antiquity. It was there 

 also that sugar was first produced in perfection at a very 

 ancient date. Here, and in its own native forests, was 

 first discovered the silk-worm, whose wonderful works 

 were first rendered useful to man by the labors of em- 

 presses and queens. Here during a period of more than 

 3000 years, its cultivation and education became the 

 lasting resource of wealth to the empire, and the favor- 

 ite pursuit of man, when in the year 877, a monster 

 appeared in China, and Baichu, a rebel, made himself 

 master of the greater part of the empire. At Canfu, a 

 great city and port, and the resort of the merchant from 

 Arabia and India, he wantonly murdered all the inhab- 

 itants, including 120,000 foreign merchants. These 

 consisted of Mahomedans, Jews, Christians, Persees; 

 and not content with the destruction of the human 

 species, this worse than barbarian extended his cruelty 

 to those insects whose chief care had become the favor- 

 ite pursuit of man, by devoting to indiscriminate destruc- 

 tion every tree of his empire by which the silk-worm 

 was nourished. Thus was utter destruction brought 

 upon the silk trade, during his reign. Canfu and the 

 empire recovered not from the calamities inflicted by 

 thi3 man, until 938, a period of sixty years. 

 10 



