Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XV.djvu/48

 SILK 40 barracks, public baths, and a custom house with magarines for storing gram and flour It as no important manufactures, and the chief Sadeis in wood and cattle. It is a very an- cient ilace and near the city are remains of
 * r t riJatTol^rectcd during the Byzantine em-

pi In 971 the emperor John Zimisces here routed the Russians under Sviatoslav. It was bested by the Russians in 1773, and again 1779, when they suffered a severe loss It c pitulated to them in 1810. In 1828 they Send it for several months, and were ob- Hgedto retire; but in 1829 it was reduced by them, and held for some years as a pledge for the payment of an indemnity by the Porte, but was eventually returned. In 1849-'53 the fortifications were greatly strengthened by the addition of 12 detached forts, of which that on the hill commanding the town is one ot the best military works of the time. In May, 1854 it was invested by Gortchakoff, and af- terward by Paskevitch; but after bombarding it for 89 days the Russians retreated with a loss of about 12,000 men and most of their armament. During the siege the town was laid in ruins by the Russian batteries and mines. SILK, a fibre obtained chiefly from the co- coons of the caterpillar of the mulberry tree moth (bombyx mori). The fibre produced by other species of the genus bombyx and by other rera of the same family is inferior to that of mori. For an account of these silk-produ- cing insects, see SILKWORM. The spider's thread resembles silk in character, but the rearing of spiders is so difficult, and the produce of each individual so small, that all attempts to convert the fibre into textile fabrics have been aban- doned. The byssus of the pinna nobilis, a shell fish inhabiting the Mediterranean, consists of long, silken filaments, which have sometimes been woven into fabrics, but rather for curi- osity than for use. The manufacture of silk doubtless originated in China. It is asserted by Chinese historians that the wife of the em- peror Hwang-ti (about 2600 B. C.) was the first who unwound the silkworm's cocoon. As early as the time of Aristotle silken fab- rics were woven in the island of Cos, but the fibre there' employed appears to have been im ported from the country of the Seres (Chinese) Later the product of the Coan looms was fa mous throughout the Roman empire as Coa tetti*, a transparent gauze. The silkworm wa unknown to Europe prior to the reign of Jus tirii:in (A. D. 627-665), when some "grains' or eggs of the insect were brought to Con stantinoplo by two Persian monks, the intro dm -i ion of the white mulberry following soon after. The silk manufacture made rapid prog res*, its chief centre-* V-ing Thebes, Corintl and Argos. In 1147 many inhabitants o m cities who were skilled in this art wer taken prisoners by Roger, king of Sicily, au( carried to Palermo. The silk industry soo spread into Italy, and Venice, Milan, Florence and Lucca were distinguished for the exce lence of their fabrics. The Moors at an early neriod introduced the manufacture into Spam, and a flourishing silk trade was already es- tablished at Granada when that city was cap- tured by Ferdinand the Catholic Louis XI. of France in 1480, and Francis I. while the French occupied Milan in 1521, introduced workmen from, there for the purpose of es- tablishing the production of silk m France; but the attempts were not successful till Io64, hen a gardener at Klines had cultivated the vhite mulberry trees and prepared suitable ood for the worms. The silk manufacture ad a rapid development in the south of France and England began to import thence ostly fabrics, such as she had previously im- orted from Italy and China. The manufac- ,ure of silk goods made great progress in Eng- and during the reign of James I., and it is aid that in 1666 the trade had become so im- portant as to give employment to 40,000 per- ons In 1685 a large body of silk weavers, driven from France by the revocation of the diet of Nantes, took refuge in England and ettled in Spitalfields, London, where they established several new branches of the art. n 1783 the value of the silk products was rated at 3,350,000. James I. early sought to estab- ish silkworm culture in the American colonies. He himself forwarded eggs to Virginia, and high rewards were offered with the hope of placing the culture upon a permanent footing. But it was all in vain ; tobacco superseded silk, n Louisiana the cultivation of silk was intro- duced in 1718 by the " Company of the West. Government grants were made to the settlers in Georgia, to encourage the cultivation of the mulberry tree. Artisans were sent to that colony in 1732 from different parts of Europe to direct the management of the worms and winding of the silk, and trees, seed, and silk- worm eggs were abundantly furnished. In 1734 the first export of raw silk, amounting to 8 Ibs., was made to England. More was sent the next year, and being manufactured into organzine by Sir Thomas Lombe, it was much admired. At the German settlement of Ebenezer, on the Savannah river, the produc- tion in 1749 had amounted to over 1,000 Ibs. of cocoons, and the silk was so well reeled that it commanded in London the highest prices. In 1751 the trustees of the Ebenezer settle- ment erected in Savannah a public filature or silk house, to instruct in the management of private filatures. At the end of 1754 the ex- ports of raw silk for the four preceding years amounted in value to $8,880, and for the next 18 years the annual exports averaged 546 Ibs. The cocoons delivered at the filature in 1757 were 1,050 Ibs. ; in 1760, 15,000 Ibs. ; and in the next eight years they amounted altogether to nearly 100,000 Ibs. But when parliament in 1766 reduced the price of cocoons from 3. (one half of which had been in the way of bounty) to Is. Qd., the production rapidly de- clined" from 20,000 Ibs. of cocoons in 1766 to