THE EARLY HISTORY OF SILK. 147 



to the country from whence the Silk Worm was 

 brought. Pliny says, that it was on the island of 

 Kos, on the opposite side of the ^Egean Sea, not 

 far from the coast of Attica, where Pamphila and her 

 nymphs made the tissue so much admired ; which 

 might be the means of leading them into this error. 



It is a remarkable fact, that many authors, for 



the long space of nine hundred years after the time 



1 of Aristotle, asserted that sericum, or silk, was either 



i made from a fleecy substance growing upon trees, 



from the coir, or inner bark of trees, or from flowers ; 



all these opinions, no doubt, arising from the indistinct 



'i accounts which they must have heard of Silk Worm 



larvae feeding on the leaves of the mulberry tree, mixed 



up with accounts which had reached them of flax and 



cotton being produced from vegetable substances. 



Some authors, however, asserted that it was produced 



from the filaments of a spider or beetle. 



It is true that, in those remote times, before 



the invention of printing, discoveries found their 



! way from one country to another by slow and 



i uncertain degrees ; so much so, that even men of 



the greatest learning and information were long of 



becoming acquainted with established facts. It may 



appear strange that the learned Isidorus, bishop of 



Hiopolis, in Spain, was unacquainted with the history 



of the Silk Worm, although he wrote a century after 



its introduction into Europe ; for we find him copying 



the account of that animal from Pliny. 



Silk was exceedingly scanty in Europe till the reign 



