280 DIKECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



that consequent upon the gift of wool to the fleecy race, or a 

 fibrous rind to the flax or hemp plants ; and that mankind is 

 not under much less obligation to Pamphila, who, according 

 to Aristotle, Avas the discoverer of the art of unwinding and 

 weaving silk, than to the inventors of the spinning of those 

 products.^ 



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

 factured ; and it was from thence that the ancients obtained 

 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 ^ ; others, that it was the 

 produce of a worm which built clay nests, and collected 

 wax ^ ; Aristotle, with more truth, that it was unwound 

 from the pupa of a large horned caterpillar.* Nor was the 

 mode of producing and manufacturing this precious material 

 known to Europe until long after the Christian a^ra, being 

 first learnt about the year 550, by two monks, who procured 

 in India the eggs of the silk-worm moth, with which, con- 

 cealing them in hollow canes, they hastened to Constan- 

 tinople, where they speedily 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 IV., who, considering that 

 mulberries grew in his kingdom as well as in Italy, resolved, 

 in opposition to the opinion of Sully, to attempt introducing 

 it, and fully succeeded. 



The whole of the silk produced in Europe, and the greater 

 proportion of that manufactured in China, is obtained from 

 the common silk- worm ; but in India considerable quantities 

 are procured from the cocoons of the larvae of other moths. 

 Of these the most important species known are the Tusseh 

 and Arindy silk-worms, of which an interesting history is 



1 Hist. Animal. 1. v. c. 19. ^ Pausanias, quoted by Goldsmith, vi. 80. 



3 Pliny, Hist. Nat. 1. xi. c. 22. 



4 Aristot. uhi supr. He does not expressly say the pupa, but this we must 

 suppose. The larva he means could not be the common silkworm, since he de- 

 scribes it as large, and having as it were horns. 



