248 HISTORY OF FRUITS. 



spinning of the silk from the second, because the first is 

 the product of the soft and tender leaves which shoot 

 forth in the spring, and are then eaten by the worm ; but 

 the hard and sowre summer leaves make the second spin- 

 ning ; which alteration of the same food does occasion so 

 great a difference in the work of these small creatures. 

 And such is the infinite abundance of silk in this pro- 

 vince, that ten suits of silk may be bought cheaper than 

 one of cloth in Europe." 



About the year 877, all the mulberry-trees in China 

 were cut down by the revolters under an officer of the 

 name of Baichu, on which account the silk-trade failed 

 for some years, to the great distress of the inhabitants. 



Not to dwell longer on the subject of the trees, let us 

 next take a review of the silk-trade, and follow it from 

 Persia to our own island, in which we shall not omit to 

 notice the exertions made by Queen Elizabeth to secure 

 a part of this valuable trade to the people she governed, 

 and the dangers and difficulties that attended the pro- 

 curing raw silk, in an age that had not contemplated the 

 possibility of procuring it from our own fields. 



The mulberry must have been a most valuable tree to 

 the Persians and Chinese in ancient times, as it enabled 

 them exclusively to supply all the known world with silk, 

 the price of which, in Europe, was an equal weight of 

 pure gold, even as late as Justinian's time, A.D. 526. 

 Madame de Genlis gives the invention of silks to the 

 Chinese : she relates in her work (La Botanique, Histo- 

 rique et Litteraire), that the Empress Siling Chi, wife to 

 Hoamti, was desired by that emperor to examine the 

 silkworms, and endeavour to turn their web to some 

 useful purpose, which she did, after various trials and 

 experiments ; and by feeding them with mulberry-leaves, 

 she discovered the means of winding the silks, and the 

 makino- of silk-stuffs, which she embroidered with flowers 



