150 THE EARLY HISTORY OF SILK. 



some of these, found access to the country of the 

 Seres, or China. There, amidst their pious occupa- 

 tions, they viewed with a curious eye the comraoa 

 dress of the Chinese, the manufactures of silk, and 

 the myriads of Silk Worms, whose education, either 

 on trees or in houses, had once been considered the 

 labour of queens. They soon discovered that it \vaa 

 impracticable to transplant the short-lived insect, but 

 that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be pre- 

 served.* They studied deeply the process of the 

 different manufactures, and the habits of the aniinaL 

 On their return, they did not communicate their 

 information to their own countrymen, but bent their 

 way to Constantinople, where they made known 

 to the Emperor Justinian the habits and economj 

 of this curious insect, and developed the Chinese 

 system of making the various fabrics. 



At that period they were in entire ignorance from 

 what it was produced ; some, however, supposed it 

 was the intestines of a spider-like insect, furnished 

 with eight legs, which was for four years fed upon a 

 paste, and afterwards on the leaves of a kind of 

 green willow, till it burst from over feeding.* Pliny 

 says, silk was the produce of a worm which formed 

 nests of clay and collected wax.f And Aristotle, 

 approaching nearer the truth, says it is unwound 

 from the pupa of a caterpillar with horns. Although 

 he does not expressly say the pupa, yet it may be 



* ROBERTSON'S Disquisition on the Commerce of India. 



* PAUSAJUAS, vi. 80. f Hist. Jfat. i 11. cap. 22. 



