Silk-Worm, 341 



the English ambassador, a circumstance which probably led 

 him to promote the cultivation of silk in England.* The 

 Koman authors were altogether ignorant of its origin, some 

 supposing it to be grown on trees as hair grows on animals, 

 others that it was produced by a shell-fish similar to the 

 mussel, which is known to throw out threads for the purpose 

 of attaching itself to rocks, others that it was the entrails of 

 a sort of spider, which was fed for four years with paste, and 

 then with the leaves of the green willow, till it burst with 

 fat, and others that it was the produce of a worm which 

 built nests of clay and collected wax. The insoct was at 

 length spread into Persia ; and eggs were afterwards, at the 

 instance of the Emperor Justinian, concealed in hollow canes 

 by two monks, and conveyed to the Isle of Cos. This 

 emperor, in the sixth century, caused them to be introduced 

 into Constantinople, and made an object of public utility. 

 They were thence successively . cultivated in Greece, in 

 Arabia, in Spain, in Italy, in France, and in all places where 

 any hope could be indulged of their succeeding. In America 

 the culture of the silk-worm was introduced into Virginia in 

 the time of James I., who himself composed a book of in- 

 structions on the subject, and caused mulberry-trees and silk- 

 worms' eggs to be sent to the colony. In Georgia, also, 

 lands were granted on condition of planting one hundred 

 white mulberry- trees on every ten acres of cleared land.'f 



The growth of the silk-worm has also been tried, but with 

 no great success, in this country. Evelyn computed that 

 one mulberry-tree would feed as many silk-worms annually 

 as would produce seven pounds of silk. " According to that 

 estimate," says Barham, J " the two thousand trees already 

 planted in Chelsea Park (which take up one-third of it) will 

 make 14,000 Ibs. weight of silk ; to be commonly worth but 

 twenty shillings a pound, those trees must make 14,OOOZ. per 

 annum." During the last century, some French refugees in 

 the south of Ireland made considerable plantations of the 



* Shaw's Gen. Zoology, vol. vi. 



t North American Review, Oct. 1828, p. 449. 



J Essay on the Silk-Worm, p. 95. London, 1719. 



