330 DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



portation, as furnishing subsistence to hundreds of thou- 

 sands more in its final manufacture ; and thus becoming 

 one of the most important wheels that give circulation to 

 national wealth. 



But we must not confine our view to Europe. When silk 

 was so scarce in this country, that James the First, while 

 king of Scotland, was forced to beg of the Earl of Mar the 

 loan of a pair of silk stockings to appear in before the 

 English ambassador, enforcing his request with the co- 

 gent appeal, " For ye would not, sure, that your king 

 should appear as a scrub before strangers — " Nay, long 

 before this period, even prior to the time that silk was va- 

 lued at its weight of 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 silk-worms appears to have existed from 

 time immemorial, being mentioned in the oldest Sanscrit 

 books a ,) one of the chief objects of cultivation and manu- 

 facture. You will admit, therefore, that when nature 



" — set to work millions of spinning worms, 

 That in their green shops weave the smooth-hair' d silk 

 To deck her sons h , " 



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 man- 

 kind is not under much less obligation to Pamphila, who, 



'' Colebrook in Asiatic Researches, v. 61. b Milton's Comus, 



