DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 331 



according to Aristotle, was the discoverer of the art of un- 

 winding and weaving silk, than to the inventors of the 

 spinning of those products a . 



It seems to have been in Asia that silk was first manu- 

 factured ; and it was from thence that the ancients obtain- 

 ed it, calling it, from the name of the country whence it 

 was supposed to be brought, Sericum. Of its origin they 

 were in a great measure ignorant, some supposing it to 

 be the entrails of a spider-like insect with eight legs, which 

 was fed for four years upon a kind of paste, and then with 

 the leaves of the green willow, until it burst with fat b ; 

 others, that it was the produce of a worm which built 

 clay nests and collected wax c ; Aristotle, with more truth, 

 that it was unwound from the pupa of a large horned ca- 

 terpillar 11 . Nor was the mode of producing and manufac- 

 turing this precious material known to Europe until long 

 after the Christian gera, being first learnt about the year 

 550 by two monks, who procured in India the eggs of the 

 silk-worm moth, with which, concealing them in hollow 

 canes, they hastened to Constantinople, where they spee- 

 dily multiplied, and were subsequently introduced into 

 Italy, of which country silk was long a peculiar and staple 

 commodity. It was not cultivated in France until the 

 time of Henry the Fourth, who, considering that mulber- 



a Hist. Animal. I. v. c. 19. A French gentleman, M. Vaucanson, has 



invented a mill for unwinding the cocoons of the silk-worm. Scott's 

 Visit to Paris, 4th ed. 304. 



b Pausanias, quoted by Goldsmith, vi. 80. 



e Pliny Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 22. 



'•> Aristot. itbi supra. He does not expressly say the pupa, but this we 

 must suppose. The larva he means could not be the common silk- 

 worm, since he describes it as large, and having as it were horns. 



