Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/84

 supposes the ancient Sericum to have been the produce of anything except the silk-worm. But of this there are several varieties, partly perhaps natural, and partly the result of domestication. He endeavors to explain some parts of Pliny's description by showing their seeming correspondence with some of the practices actually observed by the Orientals in the management of silk-worms.

An account of the wild silk-worms of China is to be found in the "Mémoires concernant l'Histoire, les Sciences, les Arts, &c., des Chinois," compiled by the missionaries of Peking. This account is principally derived from the information of Father D'Incarville, one of the missionaries. It coincides generally with the accounts already quoted from Du Halde and Breton. We extract the following particulars as conveying some further information:

"The Chinese annals from the year 150 B. C. to A. D. 638 make frequent mention of the great quantity of silk produced by the wild worms, and observe that their cocoons were as large as eggs or apricots."

The following passage is also deserving of attention: "Le papillon de ces vers sauvages, dit le Père d'Incarville, est à ailes vitrées." This information, if correct, would prove that there was at least one kind of wild silk-worms in China, which was a different species from the Phalæna Mori; for that has no transparent membranes in its wings, and would not be likely to receive them in consequence of any change in its mode of life.

We now proceed to take the Christian authors of the fourth and following centuries in the order of time.

ARNOBIUS (A. D. 306.)

thus speaks of the heathen gods:

They want the covering of a garment: the Tritonian virgin must spin a thread of extraordinary fineness, and according to circumstances put on a tunic either of mail, or silk.