32 INSECT MANUFACTURES. 



before strangers;' nay, long before this period, 

 even prior to the time that silk was valued at its 

 weight in gold at Rome, and the Emperor Aurelian 

 refused his empress a robe of silk because of its 

 dearness, the Chinese peasantry in some of the 

 provinces, millions in number, were clothed with 

 this material ; and for some thousand years to the 

 present time, it has been both there and in India 

 (where a class whose occupation was to attend 

 silkworms appears to have existed from time 

 immemorial, being mentioned in the oldest San- 

 scrit books,) one of the chief objects of cultivation 

 and manufacture. You will admit, therefore, that 

 when nature 



Set to work millions of spinning worms, 



That in their green shops weave the smooth-haired silk 

 To deck her sons, 



she was conferring upon them a benefit scarcely 

 inferior to that consequent upon the gift of wool 

 to the fleecy race, or a fibrous rind to the flax or 

 hemp plants ; and that mankind is not under 

 much less obligation to Pamphila, who, according 

 to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the art of 



