200 INSECTA. 
ern provinces of China. According to Latreille, the city of Tur- 
fan, in Little Bucharia, was for a long time the rendezvous of 
the western caravans, and the chief entrepot of the Chinese 
silks. It was the metropolis of the Seres of Upper Asia, or of 
the Serica of Ptolemy(1). Driven from their country by the 
Huns, the Seres established themselves in Great Bucharia and 
inIndia. It was from one of their colonies, Ser-hend (Ser-indt), 
that Greek missionaries, in the reign of Justinian, carried the 
eggs of the silk-worm to Constantinople. At the period of the 
first crusades, the cultivation of silk was introduced into the 
kingdom of Naples from the Morea, and several centuries after- 
wards, under the administration of Sully particularly, into 
France. Silks were also procured by the ancients, either by sea 
or land from Pegu and Ava, or the Oriental Seres, those most 
commonly mentioned by the earlier geographers. Some of the 
northern Seres settled in Great Bucharia, according to a passage 
of Dionysius the historian, seem to have made it their particu- 
lar business. It is well known that silk was formerly sold for 
its weight in gold, and thatit is now a source of great wealth to 
France. 
B. neustria, Fab.; Res., Insect., I, Class II, Pap. Noct., vi. 
Yellowish with a band or two transverse, fulyous-brown stripes 
on the middle of the superior wings. The female deposits her 
eggs round branches of trees in the manner of a ring or brace- 
let. 
The caterpillar is striped longitudinally with white, blue, and 
reddish, whence its French specific name of Jivrée. It lives in 
. society and is very injurious to fruit trees. It forms a very 
thin cocoon intermixed with a whitish farina. 
B. processionnea, Fab.; Reaum., Insect., Il, x, xi. Cinereous; 
wings of the same colour; two obscure stripes near the base of 
the upper ones, and a third, blackish, a little beyond their mid- 
dle, all transverse. : 
The body of the caterpillars is obscure-cinereous with a 
blackish back, and some yellowish tubercles. They live in so- 
ciety on the Oak, spin in common, when young, a tent, beneath 
which they are sheltered, change their domicil frequently until 
after their third change of tegument, when they become sta- 
(1) Between the Ganges andthe Eastern Ocean, according to that author. It 
was this circumstance that induced the Romans to name silk, Sericwum. Hence theic 
serica veslis. Am. Ed. 
