178 TEXTILE FIBRES. 



the greatest amount of strain during the process of weaving, it becomes 

 necessary to select the best of the cocoons that will give strong and 

 lucid fibres to form a compact warp. 



Silk, China. The culture of silk in China has received considerable 

 attention from Mr. E. H. Parker, British Consular Agent at Chung-king, 

 who has written a work entitled Up the Yangtze in 1891, in which he 

 says : " Kia-ting and Pao-ning are (together, however, with Shun- 

 K'iug) the most productive silk districts. The Kia-ting silk comes 

 first in quantity, and being mostly white takes the dye best. The fine 

 silk, however, comes in larger quantities from Shun-K'ing and Pao- 

 ning, where the yellow cocoons yield a thicker thread. The value 

 of the combined production of the two latter prefectures is estimated 

 by competent native authorities at from ,204,000 to 306,000 a year, 

 against from 408,000 to 612,000 for Kia-ting. The same authority 

 estimates the production of Y'en-shon, where the silk is celebrated for 

 its superior quality, at 40,000 a year. 



"Most places in Szechuen produce silk for local consumption, and 

 the places named are only local centres whence considerable export 

 takes place. Little or none is produced in Chung Ch'ang or Lung 

 Chung ; little again in Nan Ch'uan and only mountain silk in K'i Kiang ; 

 but most places have a little. In the small districts of Pi'chan, for 

 instance, there is a production of from 2000 to 4000 worth of 

 silk in the year. The whole business is transacted in twenty successive 

 days, at twenty different market towns. 



" The export of Szechuen silk was, within the last two years, carried 

 on almost entirely by hand. It is carried either to Hankow or, by 

 way of Shih-nan, to Sha-shib, whence it travels via Sui-ting and Tung- 

 hsiang or via King-men and Fan-Ch'eng, to Pekin and the north 

 generally. From Hankow the silk is carried by steamer to Shanghai, 

 and thence to Soochow, where it is often dyed and sold as Soochow 

 fabric. 



" Silk-dyeing used to be done much better both at Pekin and Soochow 

 than in Szechuen, but now it is extensively carried on with aniline dyes, 



more especially at Chengtu The trade with Canton, which place 



formerly took 600 to 700 boxes a year, has dropped, but both the hwo-sz 

 and the shin chang-sz, mentioned by the Shanghai delegates of the 

 Chamber of Commerce, have resumed their place in the export to Yunnan, 

 which province takes also large quantities of silk thread. Silk is also 

 exported to Kwei Chou from Chung-king. 



" The season covers the third and fourth moons (April and May), and is 



quite over in the fifth and sixth moons (June and July) In 



Kia-ting the silkworms are frequently fed at first with the leaves of the che,or 



