CLASS INSECTS. 393 



these little animals. At the approach of each moulting they 

 become as if dormant, and cease to eat ; but after having 

 changed their skins their hunger redoubles. They call petite 

 freze the moment of the great appetite which precedes each 

 of the four first moultings, and grande freze that which is 

 observed during the fifth age of the worm. The quantity of 

 nourishment which they consume increases rapidly. It is 

 reckoned that for the larvae springing from an ounce of seed, 

 seven pounds of leaves are required during the first age, the 

 duration of which is five days ; twenty-one pounds during 

 the second age, which continues only four days; seventy 

 pounds for the third age, which lasts seven days; two hundred 

 and ten pounds during the fourth age, which continues seven 

 days ; and from twelve to thirteen hundred pounds during 

 the fifth age. It is on the sixth day of the last age that the 

 grande freze takes place. The worms devour then from two 

 to three hundred pounds of leaves, and cause, whilst eating, a 

 noise like a heavy shower of rain. The second day they 

 cease to eat, and prepare themselves to undergo the first 



either on trees or in houses, had once been considered as the labour of 

 queens. They soon discovered that it was impracticable to transport the 

 short-lived insect, but that in the eggs a numerous progeny might be pre- 

 served and multiplied in a distant climate. Religion or interest had more 

 power over the Persian monks than the love of their country. After a long 

 journey they arrived at Constantinople, imparted their project to the Em- 

 peror, and were liberally encouraged by the gifts and promises of Justinian. 

 To the historians of that prince, a campaign at the foot of Mount Caucasus 

 has seemed more deserving of a minute relation than the labours of these 

 missionaries of commerce, who again entered China, deceived a jealous 

 people by concealing the eggs of the silkworm in a hollow cane, and returned 

 in triumph with the spoils of the East. Under their direction, the eggs were 

 hatched at the proper season by the artificial heat of dung ; the worms were 

 fed with mulberry leaves ; they lived and laboured in a foreign climate ; a 

 sufficient number of butterflies was saved to propagate the race, and trees 

 were planted to supply the nourishment of the rising generations. Erpe- 

 rience and reflection corrected the errors of a new attempt, and the Sogdoite 

 ambassadors acknowledged, in the succeeding reign, that the Romans were 

 not inferior to the natives of China in the education of these insects and the 

 manufactures of silk, in which both China and Constantinople have been 

 surpassed by the industry of modern Europe. I am not insensible of the 

 benefits of elegant luxury ; yet I reflect with some pain, that if the importers 

 of silk had introduced the art of printing, already practised by the Chinese, 

 the comedies of Menander and the entire decades of Livy would have been 

 perpetuated in the editions of the sixth century. A larger view of the globe 

 might at least have promoted the improvement of speculative science, but 

 the Christian geography was forcibly extracted from texts of Scripture, and 

 the study of nature was the surest symptom of an unbelieving mind. The 

 orthodox faith confined the habitable world to one temperate rone, and 

 represented the earth as an oblong surface, four hundred days' journey in 

 length, two hundred in breadth, encompassed by the ocean, and covered by 

 the solid crystal of the firmament." Decline and FaU, vol. vi. 



