
LEPIDOPTERA. 217 
ordered that the inhabitants of the country should plant two feet 
| in every acre with mulberry trees.* The first Emperor of the 

| 
| 
] 
) 
dynasty of Song (who began to reign about the year 960) pub- 
lished a decree forbidding his subjects to cut down the mulberry 
trees.t 
By all these means, according to the testimony of M. Stanislas 
Julien, the business of the fabrication of silk became general in 
China. This great empire could soon furnish to its neighbours 
this precious textile material, and create for its own profit a very 
important branch of commerce. 
It was forbidden, under pain of death, to export from China the 
silkworm’s eggs, or to furnish the necessary information in the 
art of obtaining the textile material. The manufactured article 
only could be sold out of the empire. It was thus that the Asiatic 
nations very soon understood silk; and that in many of their cities 
they applied themselves to weaving stuffs of this precious substance. 
The carpets and dyed stuffs of Babylon, mixed with gold and 
silk, enjoyed in ancient times an unparalleled renown. China 
was not, however, the only country that then furnished silk 
to the towns of Asia Minor. At a very distant period, India 
sent by her caravans very considerable quantities of it. M. Emile 
Blanchard (of the Institute) remarks, however, that the tissues 
of India must be made of a different silk from that of China, 
that is to say, of a silk of some of those Bombyces of which 
the public has been told so much of late years, and of which we 
shall have soon to speak. 
Silk commanded for centuries a prodigiously high price. In 
the time of Alexander its value in Greece was exactly its own 
weight in gold, and so it was very parsimoniously employed in 
silk tissues. ‘These were so transparent that women who wore 
them were scarcely covered. 
Silk was unknown to the Romans before Julius Cesar. It was 
to him that Rome owed its acquaintance with this new material. 
He introduced it, moreover, in a singularly magnificent manner. 
One day, at a féte given in the Colosseum—a combat of animals 
and gladiators—the people saw the coarse tent of cloth, intended 
to keep off the rays of the sun, replaced by a magnificent covering 
* « Annales de la dynastie des Thang.’ + ‘‘ Histoire de la dynastie des Song.” 

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