A treatise on the origin, progressive improvement, and present state of the silk manufacture / [Anon].

  • Porter, George Richardson, 1792-1852.
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on the origin, progressive improvement, and present state of the silk manufacture / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    31/370 (page 7)
    ander presented him with the sum of 800 talents. So well did Aristotle avail himself of these opportunities afforded by his royal pupil, that although his writings on natural history are the most ancient extant, they are yet found to be more correct than those of many who wrote at later periods on that branch of science. Aristotle certainly gives the best account of the silk- worm that is to be found in any ancient author, describ- ing it as a horned worm, which passes through several transformations,, and produces bombykia. It is remark- able, however, that, although minute in his description of the worm, he yet fails to indicate the country of its origin. Pliny, whose writings afford evidence of so much erudition, has given an account of the silkworm which greatly varies from that of the Grecian philosopher. Assyria is assigned by the Roman naturalist as the native country of the homhyx; and he transplants Pamphila and her manufacture to Ceos, an island on the opposite side of the iEgean Sea, near to the coast of Attica. He tells us, that the stuff which the women of Rome unravelled and wove anew, was made from a woolly substance, combed by the Seres from the leaves of trees, and that draperies formed of this material were imported from the country of the Seres. During a period of nine centuries following the time of Aristotle, various writers*' asserted that sericum was made, either from fleeces growing upon trees, “ Velleraque ut foliis depectant tenui# Seres, —” f from the bark of trees, or from flowers. With that confusion of ideas which was unavoidable in attempting to describe what they did not understand, these writers mingled together what they had heard or read of silk- worms feeding on mulberry leaves, with cotton growing upon shrubs, with flax, and with coir, or the inner rind of the cocoa-nut. Some few authors came nearer to the truth, and stated, that the silken filament was obtained