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BOMBYCIDAE. General Topics. By Dr. A. Seitz. 
As those historians regarding Adam not as a personification of an Asiatic descendant from the first 
man but as a historical person, computed him to have died in the year 3053 before our Christian era, we find 
the knowledge of the silk-moth stated in the Chinese annals already at about the same time in which Adam 
was still living, and it is easily understood that this insect was closely associated with the first great event 
which can be historically borne out, i. e. the great flood. 
It is of no importance whether the inundations of the South Asiatic lowlands have occurred in the 
south and south-east of Asia at the very same time and have been effected by the same cosmic or tellurian 
events, for which Rudolf Falb has provided several reasons, or whether the countries of Southern Asia were 
afflicted successively; it seems to be sure that the receding of the flood was not continuous in South East Asia, 
but interrupted by many recurring floods, by which the human beings having been chased to the central 
highlands were at last so much frightened that the Chinese government of those times devised means and 
ways for making the lowland-habitations that had been left on account of the flood attractive again for the 
population. 
The Emporer Yau reigning then at first entrusted Kwan with this task who, however, was unequal 
to this mission. His son Yu recognized that the lowlands were still too much interspersed with swamps and 
rank growth as to enable the fields to be successfully and properly cultivated, and he therefore made use of the 
silk-culture in order to reaccustom the inhabitants of South East Asia to a productive occupation. The soil 
being still very soft proved not to be unfavourable for the cultivation of mulberries, and the reconstruction of 
the nations made rapid progress. Already under Yau’s successor Schun silk garments were introduced for 
state and court officials, into which allegorical figures and pictures were embroidered or interwoven, which 
makes us presume that the silk-industry must have made rather great progress. 
Only some time hereafter the silk-culture having been chiefly attended to by the court-circles of China. 
Proper became popular with the Chinese nation and the adjoining countries, and only in the last millennium 
before Christ the trade with silks was extended to the Mediterranean Sea. And when Europe was at the height 
of her prosperity, the trade between her and China was so brisk that whole countries and nations owed their 
rise and wealth to this produce, such as Central Asiatic Khotan, Bucharia and great parts of the Iran. 
The breeding of the larva of Bombyx mori was in the beginning anxiously guarded as a monopoly by 
the Chinese , and it was only by and by and indirectly that the art of silk production found its way to the 
western countries. At the time of Rom’s greatest prosperity, during the Caesarian times, such enormous quan¬ 
tities of silks were imported from China to the west that the Chinese had to perceive that their export exceeded 
by far the consumption of India and the other intermediate countries. They told themselves that to the west 
of the countries with which they were in commercial connexion, there must exist a great empire of an enormous 
purchasing power and living in immense luxury, and they should have very much liked to get in touch with 
it. This was the Roman Empire which, on her part, would also have liked to enter into direct commercial 
intercourse with them. But all the efforts to shut out the commission agents were in vein owing to the successful 
resistance of the Central and South Asiatic nations that did not allow this lucrative intermediary trade to 
be snatched away from them. Particularly the Indians, Parthians and Arabians, and in the north the Central 
Asians averted all the attempts of the purchasers and producers to get to each other; repeated Chinese recon¬ 
noitring embassies were stopped or forced to return, but not in any case furnished with sufficient information, 
and on the other hand all the Roman attempts to advance to the east were frustrated by the desperate resistance 
of the Parthians who were never subdued by the Romans. 
Till to the 4th century after Christ the silk luxury increased enormously in India, Persia, but parti¬ 
cularly in the Byzantine Empire, and even the popes’ appeals against the luxuriancy and extravagance of silk 
costumes and furniture were in vain and even only caused those who stuck to their plain and decent dress 
to be mocked as hypocrites and slaves of the clergy. Only the migration of people and its after-effects put 
an end to the immense waste of silks in the western countries. This also brought about the collapse of the most 
important branch of trade of the Persian Empire which was more and more buried in historical insignificance; 
the influx of great numbers of Syrian silk-weavers in whose patria the silk industry had been annihilated by 
insane taxes of the Byzantine government, remained therefore without a lasting importance for the Parthian 
Empire. 
The breeding of Bombyx mori came to Europe under the reign of Justinianus. Already in the 4th 
century it had broken through the Chinese monopoly — the export of breeding material was prohibited on 
pain of death — by a Chinese princess married to Bucharia having smuggled across the frontier eggs of B. mori 
in the calices of her head-dress. 
For a long time Bucharia provided now the Sogdians being eminent tradespeople with self-bred raw 
silk particularly produced in the Bucharian Khotan, which was then transmitted partly worked up partly 
raw to the Parthians and by them to the western countries, as soon as more peaceful times brought again 
about wealth and a greater consumption of silks. But the Sassanids grew more and more adverse to the con- 
