Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/83



"The wild silk-worms are found in the hottest provinces of China, especially near Canton. They live indifferently on all sorts of leaves, particularly on those of the ash, the oak, and the fagara, and spin a greyish and rarely white silk. The coarse cloth manufactured from it is called Kien-tcheou, will bear washing, and on that account persons of quality do not disdain to wear clothes of it. With this silk also the strings of musical instruments are made, because it is stronger and more sonorous.

"Entomologists treat but very superficially of the habits of the wild silk-worms, while they dwell in minute detail on the method of rearing them in Provence.

"It is between the nineteenth and twenty-second day of their existence, that they undertake the great work of spinning their cocoon. They curve a leaf into a kind of cup, and then form a cocoon as large and nearly as hard as a hen's egg! This cocoon has one end open like a reversed funnel; it is a passage for the butterfly, which is to come out.

"The oak-worms are slower in making their cocoon than those of the fagara and ash, and they set about it differently. Instead of bending a single leaf, they roll themselves in two or three and spin their cocoon. It is larger, but the silk is inferior in quality, and of course not so valuable.

"The cocoons of wild silk-worms are so strong and compact, that the insects encounter great difficulty in extricating themselves, and therefore remain inclosed from the end of the summer, to the spring of the following year. These butterflies, unlike the domestic insect, fly very well.—The domestic silk-worm is but a variety of the wild species. It is fed on the leaves of the mulberry tree." (See chap. VIII.)

The circumstance that the worms were sometimes fed with oak-leaves is mentioned in Du Halde's History of China, vol. ii. p. 363.

Here then we have a justification of the ancients in asserting, both that the silk-worms produced ''long threads and webs floating in the air like those of spiders'', and that they fed upon the leaves of the oak, the ash, and many other trees. It may be recollected, that Pliny expressly mentions both the oak (quercus) and the ash (fraxinus).

Until very lately the use of silk among the ancients was investigated only by philologists. Within a few years M. Latreille, an entomologist of the highest distinction, has directed his attention to the subject and has examined particularly the above-cited passages of Aristotle, Pliny, and Pausanias. He never