CLASS INSECTS. 429 



Peloponnesus, and it gave to this part of Greece the modern 

 name of Morea. From thence the mulberry and the silk- 

 worm passed into Sicily, by the care of King Eoger, and 

 acquired in Calabria a rapid extension. Some gentlemen who 

 had accompanied Charles the Eighth into Italy during the 

 war of 1494, having discovered all the advantages which 

 that country drew from this branch of agriculture, were 



even of China. Justinian embraced a more humble expedient, and solicited 

 the aid of his Christian allies, Ethiopians of Abyssinia, who had recently 

 acquired the arts of navigation, the spirit of trade, and the seaport of 

 Adulis, still decorated with the trophies of a Grecian conqueror. Along the 

 African coast, they penetrated to the Equator in search of gold, emeralds, 

 and aromatics ; but they wisely declined an unequal competition, in which 

 they must be always prevented by the vicinity of the Persians to the markets 

 of India ; and the Emperor submitted to the disappointment, till his wishes 

 were gratified by an unexpected event. The gospel had been preached to the 

 Indians ; a bishop already governed the Christians of St. Thomas, on the 

 pepper coast of Malabar ; a church was planted in Ceylon, and the mission- 

 aries pursued the footsteps of commerce to the extremities of Asia. Two 

 Persian monks had long resided in China, perhaps in the royal city of 

 Nankin, the seat of a monarch addicted to foreign superstitions, and who 

 actually received an embassy from the isle of Ceylon. Amidst their pious 

 occupations, they viewed with a curious eye the common dress of the Chinese, 

 the manufactures of silk, and the myriads of silkworms, whose education, 

 either on trees or in houses, had ouce 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. Eeligipn 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 j a 

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

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

 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 zone, 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 Fall, vol. vi. 



