428 ZOOLOGY. 



place them on hurdles, where they find nourishment appro- 

 priate to their wants. For this purpose it is usual to 

 cover the eggs with a sheet of perforated paper, through 

 the holes made in which the worms ascend to reach the leaves 

 of the mulberry placed above ; and it is when they are on the 

 branches furnished with these leaves that they are trans- 

 ported on the hurdles prepared to serve as their dwellings. 

 The nourishment of the silkworm consists in the leaves of 

 the mulberry (Fig. 449), and it is consequently on the cul- 

 ture of this plant that the possibility of rearing these insects 

 depends. The white mulberry is the species most generally 

 employed for this purpose ; it is a tree which grows to the 

 height of forty or fifty feet, and which gives four or five 

 quintals'* of leaves, sometimes even ten or twelve. It accom- 

 modates itself sufficiently well in most localities, and it has 

 been cultivated with success even in the north of Europe, but 

 it grows nowhere wild. In fact, this mulberry-tree is origi- 

 nally from China. Two Greek monks introduced it into 

 Europe towards the middle of the sixth era, and the silk- 

 worm with it.f Its culture soon spread throughout the 



* Quintal, one hundred pounds weight. 



t " I need not explain that silk is originally spun from the bowels of a 

 caterpillar, and that it composes the golden tomb from whence a worm 

 emerges in the form of a butterfly. Till the reign of Justinian, the silk- 

 worms, who feed on the leaves of the white mulberry tree, were confined to 

 China ; those of the pine, the oak, and the ash were common in the forests 

 both of Asia and Europe, but as their education is more difficult, and their 

 produce more uncertain, they were generally neglected, except in the little 

 island of Leos, near the coast of Africa. A thin gauze was procured from 

 their webs ; and this Leon manufacture, the invention of a woman, for female 

 use, was long admired both in the East and at Rome. Whatever suspicions 

 may be raised by the garments of the Medes and Assyrians, Virgil is the 

 most ancient writer who expressly mentions the soft wool which was combed 

 from the trees of the Seres or Chinese ; and this natural error, less mar- 

 vellous than the truth, was slowly corrected by the knowledge of a valuable 

 insect, the first artificer of the luxury of nations. That rare and elegant 

 luxury was censured in the age of Tiberius by this gravest of the Komans. 

 Two hundred years after the age of Pliny, the use of pure, or even of 

 mixed silks was confined to the female sex, and all the opulent citizens of 

 Rome and the provinces were insensibly familiarized with the example of 

 Heliogabalus, the first who, by this effeminate habit, had sullied the dignity 

 of an emperor and a man. Aurelian complained that a pound of silk was 

 sold at Rome for twelve ounces of gold ; but the supply increased with the 

 demand, and the price diminished with the supply. 



" As silk became of indispensable use, the Emperor Justinian saw with 

 concern that the Persians had occupied by land and sea the monopoly of this 

 important supply, and that the wealth of his subjects was continually drained 

 by a nation of enemies and idolaters. An active government would have 

 restored the trade of Egypt and the navigation of the Red Sea, which had 

 decayed with the prosperity of the Empire ; and the Roman vessels might 

 have sailed, for the purchase of silk, to the ports of Ceylon, of Malacca, or 



