Silk and Sericulture

SILK AND SERICULTURE. Silk is a fibrous substance produced by many insects, principally in the form of a cocoon or covering within which the creatures are enclosed and protected during the period of their principal transformations; the webs and nests, etc., formed by spiders are also of silk. But the fibres used for manufacturing purposes are exclusively produced by the mulberry silk-moth of China, Bombyx mori, and a few other moths closely allied to that insect. Among the Chinese the name of the silkworm is "si," Korean "soi"; to the ancient Greeks it became known as alp, , the nation whence it came was to them IijpEs, and the fibre itself unpticio, whence the Latin sericum, the French soie, the German Seide and the English silk.

History.

The silk industry originated in China; and according to native records it has existed there from a very remote period. The empress, known as the lady of Si-ling, wife of a famous emperor, Huang-ti (2640 B.c.), encouraged the cultivation of the mulberry tree, the rearing of the worms and the reeling of silk. This empress is said to have devoted herself personally to the care of silkworms, and she is by the Chinese credited with the invention of the loom. A voluminous ancient literature testifies to the antiquity and the importance of Chinese sericulture, and to the attention bestowed on it by royal and noble families. The Chinese guarded the secrets of their valuable art with vigilant jealousy; and there is no doubt that many centuries passed before the culture spread beyond the country of its origin. Through Korea a knowledge of the silkworm and its produce reached Japan, but not before the early part of the 3rd century. One of the most ancient books of Japanese history, the Niliongi, states that towards A.D. 30o some Koreans were sent from Japan to China to engage competent people to teach the arts of weaving and preparing silk goods. They brought with them four Chinese girls, who instructed the court and the people in the art of plain and figured weaving; and to the honour of these pioneer silk weavers a temple was erected in the province of Settsu. Great

efforts were made to encourage the industry, which from that period grew into one of national importance. At a period prob ably a little later knowledge of the working of silk travelled west ward, and the cultivation of the silkworm was established in India. According to a tradition the eggs of the insect and the seed of the mulberry tree were carried to India by a Chinese princess concealed in the lining of her head-dress. The fact that sericul ture was in India established in the valley of the Brahma putra and in the tract lying between that river and the Ganges renders it probable that it was introduced overland from the Chinese empire. References in Sanskrit literature indicate how ever that a silk industry existed in India at about i000 or possibly B.C. From the Ganges valley the silkworm was slowly car ried westward and spread in Khotan, Persia and Central Asia.

Most critics recognize in the obscure word d'ineseq or d'mesheq, Amos iii. 12, a name of silk corresponding to the Arabic dimaks, late Greek ;.47-act, English damask, and also follow the ancients in understanding meshi, Ezek. xvi. 1o, 13, of "silken gauze." But the first notice of the silkworm in Western literature occurs in Aristotle, Hist. anim. v. 19 (i7), i i (6), where he speaks of "a great worm which has horns and so differs from others. At its first metamorphosis it produces a caterpillar, then a bombylius and lastly a chrysalis—all these changes taking place within six months. From this animal women separate and reel off the cocoons and afterwards spin them. It is said that this was first spun in the island of Cos by Pamphile, daughter of Plates." Aristotle's vague knowledge of the worm may have been derived from information acquired by the Greeks with Alexander the Great ; but long before this time raw silk must have begun to be imported at Cos, where it was woven into a gauzy tissue, the famous Coa vestis, which revealed rather than clothed the form.