DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 189 



mentioned in the oldest Sanscrit books 1 ), one of the chief objects of culti- 

 vation and manufacture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature 



S et to work millions of spinning worms, 

 That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair'd silk 

 To deck her sons," 2 



she was conferring upon them a benefit scarcely inferior to that con- 

 sequent upon the gift of wool to the fleecy race, or a fibrous rind to the 

 flax or hemp plants ; and that mankind is not under much less obligation 

 to Pamphila, who, according to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the art of 

 unwinding and weaving silk, than to the inventors of the spinning of those 

 products. 3 



It seems to have been in Asia that silk was first manufactured ; and it 

 was from thence that the ancients obtained it, calling it, from the name of 

 the country whence it was supposed to be brought, Sericum. Of its origin 

 they were in a great measure ignorant, some supposing it to be the entrails 

 of a spider-like insect with eight legs, which was fed for four years upon a 

 kind of paste, and then with the leaves of the green willow, until it burst 

 with fat 4 ; others that it was the produce of a worm which built clay nests, 

 and collected wax 5 ; Aristotle, with more truth, that it was unwound from 

 the pupa of a large horned caterpillar. 6 Nor was the mode of producing 

 and manufacturing this precious material known to Europe until long after 

 the Christian era, being first learnt about the year 550, by two monks, 

 who procured in India the eggs of the silk-worm moth, with which, con- 

 cealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Constantinople, where they 

 speedily multiplied, and were subsequently introduced into Italy, of which 

 country silk was long a peculiar and staple commodity. It was not cul- 

 tivated in France until the time of Henry IV., who, considering that mul- 

 berries grew in his kingdom as well as in Italy, resolved, in opposition to 

 the opinion of Sully, to attempt introducing it, and fully succeeded. 



The whole of the silk produced in Europe, and the greater proportion 

 of that manufactured in China, is obtained from the common silk-worm ; 

 but in India considerable quantities are procured from the cocoons of the 

 larvas of other moths. Of these the most important species known are 

 the Tusseh and Arindy silk-worms, of which an interesting history is given 

 by Dr. Roxburgh in the Linnean Transactions. 7 These insects are both 

 natives of Bengal. The first (Saturnia Paphia) feeds upon the leaves of 

 the Jujube tree (Rhamnus Jujuba), or Byer of the Hindoos, and of the 

 Termmalia alata glabra Roxburgh, theAsseenof the Hindoos, and is found 

 in such abundance as from time immemorial to have afforded a constant 

 supply of a very durable, coarse, dark-coloured silk, which is woven into 

 a cloth called Tussehdoot'kies, much worn by the Brahmins and other sects, 

 and would, doubtless, be highly useful to the inhabitants of many parts of 

 America, and of the south of Europe, where a light and cool, and at the 



1 Colebrook in Asiatic Researches, v. 61. 2 Milton's Comus. 



5 Hist. Animal. 1. v. c. 19. 4 Pausanias, quoted bv Goldsmith, vi. 80. 



5 Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 22. 



6 Aristot. ubi supr. He does not expressly say the pupa, but this we must sup- 

 pose. The larva he means could not be the common silkworm, since he describes it 

 as large, and having as it were horns. 



7 vii. 3348. Compare Lord Valentia's Travels, i. 78. 



