No. 24. — 1881.] SERICULTURE IN CEYLON. 



137 



SERICULTURE IN CEYLON. 

 By J. L. Yanderstraaten, m.d. 



(Read October 6th, 1881.) 



Sericulture, or, the raising of silk-worms, is derived from 

 Seres, 'Chinese/ and cultura, 'culture/ because "silk" came 

 from the Chinese word Se, which signifies 'silk.' The name, 

 therefore, of the great Empire of China derives its name from 

 the great silk industry. The discovery of the uses to which 

 the cocoon of the silk-worm might be applied appears to 

 have been first made in China by an Empress, who was the 

 first to unravel the filmy thread, and to work it into a web of 

 cloth, about 2,700 years before the Christian era. 



In the middle of the 6th century, the Western world received 

 the great boon of a supply of silk-worms' eggs. These were 

 secretly conveyed from Semida, between Tartary and China, to 

 Constantinople, by two Persian monks, who concealed the eggs 

 in a hollow cane. At the proper season they were hatched, and 

 the caterpillars were fed with the leaves of the wild mulberry 

 tree. From this small commencement the myriads of silk 

 worms have sprung, which, throughout Europe and Western 

 Asia, have met the continual demand for silk. The introduc- 

 tion of silk into Europe occurred about the year A. D. 552, in 

 the reign of Justinian, and we find from Tennent's History of 

 Ceylon, (Yol. L, p. 569) that the earliest record made of the 

 introduction of silk into the Island of Ceylon, was in the 

 reign of Justinian, by Cosmas, an Egyptian merchant, who 

 published the narrative of Sopater, a Greek trader, whom he 

 had met at Adulein Ethiopia, when on his return from Ceylon. 

 Sopater told Cosmas that, from China and other emporia, 

 silk and other articles named by him were imported into 

 Ceylon. 



