LEPIDOPTERA. 215 
The native country of the silkworm is not better known than that 
of the greater number of plants and animals which form the staple 
of agricultural industry. It is probable, however, that its native 
country was China. It was certainly in this vast empire that long 
since the business of fabricating silk began. One reads the 
following in “L’Histoire générale de la Chine,” by le P. Mailla :— 
“The Emperor Hoang-ti, who lived 2,600 years before our era, 
wished that Si-ling-chi, his wife, should contribute to the happi- 
ness of his people; he charged her to study the silkworm, and to 
try to utilise its threads. Si-ling-chi caused a great quantity of 
these insects to be collected, which she fed herself in a place 
destined exclusively for the purpose; she not only discovered the 
means of rearing them, but still further the manner of winding off 
their silk and of employing it in the manufacture of fabrics.” 
It may be asked, however, if the learned men who composed 
this recital did not collect under the reign of the emperor Hoang-ti 
all the events and all the discoveries whose dates were lost in the 
obscurity of the most remote periods of history. Is not the 
Empress Si-ling-chi a mythical person? a sort of Chinese Ceres, 
to whom, under the title of goddess of the silkworm, they then 
raised altars ? : 
Here, at any rate,is how Duhalde* analyses the recital of the 
Chinese annalists on the remarkable fact of the introduction of the 
silkworm, and its rich products, into the Chinese empire :— 
- “Up to the time of this queen (Si-ling-chi),”” says he, “when 
the country was only lately cleared and brought into cultivation, 
the people employed the skins of animals as clothes. But these 
skins were no longer sufficient for the multitude of the inhabi- 
tants ; necessity made them industrious; they applied themselves 
to the manufacture of cloth wherewith to cover themselves. But it 
was to this princess that they owed the useful invention of silk 
stuffs. Afterwards, the empresses, named by Chinese authors, 
according to the order of their dynasties, found an agreeable occu- 
pation in superintending the hatching, rearing, and feeding of 
sulkworms, in making silk, and working it up when made. There 
was an enclosure attached to the palace for the cultivation of 
mulberry trees. 
* “ Description de la Chine,” tom. ii., p. 205. 
