Bombyx Mori

Bombyx mori

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The silk-worm of commerce is not known to exist in a feral or wild state in the regions where it is now most commonly reared. In this respect it is like many other domesticated animals. The caterpillar, of which a figure is herewith given, feeds upon the leaves of the white mulberry, and will also feed freely upon the leaves of the Osage orange, an American hedge-plant. The insect was introduced at an early date into the American colonies, but its culture has not as yet risen in the New World to great proportions, though the manufacture of silk from imported material is at the present day an important American industry.

The culture of silk is an industry which might be best undertaken and maintained in the Southern States of the American Union, where climatic conditions are wholly favorable to it. The Carolinas and Georgia appear to furnish the best climate for the development of this industry, and it is believed by those who are most conversant with the matter that in time the rearing of the silk worm may become in these States an exceedingly important and profitable branch of industry. Southern California and Arizona are also likely to become centers in which the growing of raw silk may be successfully pursued.

THE HISTORY OF SILK-CULTURE

The greater portion of the silk of commerce is produced by the larvae of the moth known as Bombyx mori. The insect, through ages of human culture, has become thoroughly domesticated. It has been wrongly maintained that the moth known as Theophila buttoni, and which is found in China and western India, is the ancestral or feral form from which the domesticated Bombyx mori has been derived. The common silkworm does not exist in a wild state anywhere so far as is known, and is as much a domestic animal as the Jersey cow or the greyhound. Chinese literature clearly shows that the silk-industry originated in that country. The Emperor Hwang-Ti, whose reign was in the eighteenth century B.C., fostered the culture of silk, and his empress, Si-Ling-Chi, who gave her personal attention to the breeding of silk-worms and the manufacture of silk, was deified in consequence, and is reputed to be "the goddess of silk-worms." The methods of securing the silk and weaving fabrics from it were held secret by the Chinese for nearly two thousand years, and only after ages was a knowledge of the art transmitted to Corea, and thence to Japan. Silk in very small quantities was imported into Greece and Rome from China by way of Persia. Aristotle was the first writer in Europe to give a correct account of the manner in which silk is produced. He is supposed to have derived his information from those who had accompanied Alexander the Great on his victorious march into India. The price of silken fabrics in the West at the beginning of the Christian era, owing to the cost of transportation, was so great that only the very rich could possess garments of this material. Their use was restricted to wealthy women. For a man to use silken clothing was esteemed a sign of luxurious effeminacy. Under the reigns of Tiberius, Vespasian, and Diocletian the use of silken apparel by men was positively interdicted; but gradually, with the increase of importation of raw silk from Persia and its manufacture into stuffs in Asia Minor and elsewhere, the habit of using it grew, and its cost was slowly lowered. Under the reign of the Emperor Justinian, in the sixth century, positive steps to foster sericulture as an imperial monopoly were taken. Silk-looms operated by women were established in the palace at Constantinople, and Justinian endeavored, in view of the loss of the supply of raw silk brought about by a war with Persia, to induce the Prince of Abyssinia to secure to him supplies of the article by a circuitous route. Relief was finally brought to the embarrassed imperial manufacturer when two Nestorian monks, who had lived long in China and had learned all the processes of silk-culture, were induced to go back to that far-away land and bring to Constantinople a stock of the eggs of the silk-worm. As it was among the Chinese a capital offense to reveal the secrets of the trade or to export the eggs from which the worms are hatched, the two priests had to proceed with the utmost caution. They concealed the eggs in the hollows of the bamboo staffs which they carried as pilgrims. From these eggs, thus transported to Constantinople in A.D. 555, all of the silk-worms in Europe, Africa, Asia Minor, and America until as recently as 1865 were descended. It was not until the last-mentioned year that any importation of fresh eggs of the silk-worm from China took place. Those two bamboo sticks held within themselves the germ of a vast industry, countless costly wardrobes, the raiment of kings, queens, and emperors, and untold wealth.