A Treatise on the Origin, Progressive Improvement, and Present State of the Silk Manufacture

Time of its earliest use uncertain.-First produced and adopted in the East, China the Country of the Silkworm.-The Seres of the Ancients the Chinese of the Moderns.-Silk manufactured at an early period in the Island of Cos.-Curious process.-Silk among the Persian spoils acquired by Alexander the Great.-Aristotle's Description of the Bombyx.-Absurd notions of different writers.-Silk highly prized at Rome.-Marcus Antoninus sends Ambassadors to China.-Persian Monopoly.-Attempts of Justinian to destroy this.-His Failure.-Introduction of the Silkworm into Constantinople.-Imperial Manufacture.-Silkworms successfully reared in other parts of Greece. Surprise of the Sogdian Ambassador.— Destruction of Mulberry Trees in China.

SILK, and the many textures wrought from this beautiful material, are so universally and familiarly known, that the peculiar manner of its production cannot fail to be a subject of interesting investigation.

It is a wonderful fact, that the thick velvet and the stiff brocade, the thin gauze and the delicate blonde, should all be formed from the product of the labors of a little worm; and we are irresistibly prompted to inquire how such results are accomplished.

To trace from their origin the progressive steps by which man has adapted to his use the various productions of nature, is rarely possible. All that can be collected concerning sev◄ eral of the important arts of life is, that they have flowed to us from the east, and that many among them have issued from China in a state of comparative perfectness. This is particularly the case with the subject of our present inquiry.

It is impossible to fix the period when man first divested the chrysalis of its dwelling, and discovered that the little yellow ball, which adhered to the leaf of the mulberry tree, could be evolved into a slender filament, and thence be made to form tissues of endless beauty and variety. From a certain point, we can trace the progressive improvements of the silk manufacture, but seek in vain for authentic information respecting its earliest origin; and, while compelled to assign the merit of this to the Chinese, we cannot account for the degree of excellence which the art had attained previous to the time when even the existence of the material became known in the West. This proficiency alone, however, affords sufficient proof that the manufacture was of no recent origin. The manual arts arrive at perfection by very slow degrees. Improvements resulting from invention, as distinguished from imitation, are seldom rapid; and if this position hold good as a general principle, it is more especially applicable to labors unassisted by any save the rudest machinery, and practised by a people who, so far at least as we are in formed, could derive little aid from science.

Notwithstanding these disadvantages, the Chinese, in the remotest ages, produced sugar, silk, and many other manufactures, with a degree of excellence which even now is scarcely surpassed. Yet while other nations have been rapidly advancing in knowledge, they have remained stationary. Debarred from intercourse with their kind, less by the obstructions which they raised to the ingress of strangers, than by the vanity which led them to make so false an estimate of other nations, this extraordinary people drew upon the resources of their own intelligence for discoveries the most important, and pursued them to an useful end with industry the most persevering. Their industry remains, but the intelligence to which it owed its principal value appears to have been arrested.* In the faculty of imitating, they are still considered unrivalled; but this is a quality which would seem to place them in the train of other nations, rather than as taking the lead in discovery and civilization.

The first introduction of Indian luxuries to the knowledge of the ancients, was accompanied by the most fabulous accounts of the regions of their production, and gave occasion for many absurd speculations. This state of ignorance was, no doubt, in a great part owing to the peculiar policy of the Chinese, who, habitually and exceedingly jealous of all other

* Note A.

people, enveloped the practice of their various arts in so much mystery, that stratagem was often baffled in the endeavor to unravel it, leaving us indebted for the disclosure to fortuitous circumstances.

In the attempt here made to trace, from the dark ages of antiquity to the present time, the progress of a trade and manufacture so widely diffused over the civilized world as those of silk, chronological order is followed as closely as the nature of the inquiry will permit,

Reasons already stated lead us to consider it probable that the inhabitants of China enjoyed the use of silk from a period greatly anterior to its introduction elsewhere. By the written records of that country, we are told that the art of converting to their own advantage the labors of the silkworm was known and practised among them 2700 years before the commencement of the Christian era. Their most ancient authorities represent the empresses of China as surrounded by their women, engaged in the occupations of hatching and rearing silkworms, and in weaving tissues from their produce. To the empress See-ling-shee, the consort of Hoang-tee, is ascribed the honor of having first observed the silk produced by the worms, of unravelling their cocoons, and of working the fine filament into a web of cloth.

Silk is described by the ancients as coming first from Serica or Sereinda, that part of India which lies beyond the Ganges. Seres is the designation given by the Greeks and Romans to the people who inhabited those remote regions, and Sereinda is, apparently, a compound of Seres and Indi. The latter is a general term, applied by the ancients to all distant nations, with as little precision as India is now used by modern Europeans.

It is now so generally admitted that the Seres of the ancients are the Chinese of the moderns, that it is unnecessary to enter into any discussion in proof of this belief. Se is the name for silk in the Chinese language; this, by a faulty pronunciation, not uncommon in their frontier provinces, acquired the final r, thus changing the word into Ser, the very name adopted by the Greeks. We can, therefore, hardly doubt that these obtained the name, as well as the material itself, first from China.

The labors of the silkworm, whose produce holds so important a place among the luxuries of modern life, were, until the time of the emperor Justinian, wholly confined to China. Long before that period, however, not only were manufac、 tures of silk introduced among the nations which then en

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A Treatise on the Origin, Progressive Improvement, and Present State of the ...