AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



earth, and the amount exported annually from it to Europe, North 

 America, and Bombay is between 52,000 and 85,000 bales (of 100 



kg.)- 



The introduction of silk-culture into Japan is recorded as taking 



place in the second half of the third century (289), and is attributed 

 to Corean and Chinese immigrants. It found a footing and ex- 

 tended contemporaneously with Buddhism. Several legends, how- 

 ever, assign quite another origin, giving a much earlier date. The 

 best known of these informs us that an Indian Princess was com- 

 mitted to the waves of the ocean in the hollowed trunk of a mul- 

 berry tree by her cruel step-mother, who had already made several 

 attempts to get rid of her ; and the waves washed her to Toyoura 

 on the coast of Hitachi. Here she was kindly treated by the in- 

 habitants, and in gratitude for their treatment was transformed 

 into a silkworm after her death. 



For the planting of mulberry-trees and silk-culture generally, 

 the Japanese are especially indebted to the twenty-first Mikado, 

 Yuriaku Tenno (457-479 A.D.), and also to his Empress, who gave 

 in this respect a good example to court and people. And from 

 that time, too, foreign immigrants had to pay their duties in silk. 

 But it was not until the second half of the sixth century and 

 thereafter that silk-culture became fairly established and extended 

 as a national branch of industry. 



It has retained the attention and interest of the rulers of Japan, 

 even in the altered circumstances of modern times. The reigning 

 Mikado on more than one occasion has attested his fondness for 

 silk-culture and the products of silk-weaving ; and this explains 

 the fact that the Japanese court chooses for presents chiefly home- 

 made silk stuffs. 



Silk-culture, like tea-growing, has experienced a revival in the 

 last thirty years. The chief cause of this was the high prices 

 which were paid for raw silk and silkworm eggs, m consequence of 

 the silkworm disease raging in Europe. Though these prices have 

 sunk again, the increased exportation of the former still continues. 

 Silk will probably remain in future the principal article of com- 

 merce of Japan, and more than any other afford support and labour 

 to many a poor valley. 



As compared with China and Japan, the other Asiatic silk-raising 

 countries play no great part. In India the production of silk, if it 

 has not fallen off, has at any rate remained stationary ; and the 

 general decay in Persian and Turkish countries has already, to a 

 great extent, embraced also the principal industry of many districts, 

 silk-culture. Nowhere in the silk-producing countries of Europe 

 did it receive from the above mentioned state of affairs that new 

 impulse which was so effective in Japan. 



In Europe, the Greeks first became closely acquainted with silk 

 through the expedition of Alexander the Great throuc^h Persia to 

 India. His general Nearchos, according to Arrian, clothed him- 



