HANKS FROM ITALY.
BOOK OF SILK FROM CHINA.
SLIP FROM BENGAL.
We may aptly conclude our account of this most industrious silk-manufacturer in the words of the Rev. Samuel Pullein, M.A., who, so long ago as 1758, wrote an Essay on the Culture of Silk, in which the following passage occurs:—
“There is scarce anything among the various wonders which the animal creation affords more admirable than the variety of changes which the silkworm undergoes; but the curious texture of that silken covering with which it surrounds itself when it becomes a moth, and arrives at the perfection of its animal life, vastly surpasses what is made by other animals of this class. All the caterpillar kind do indeed undergo changes like those of the silkworm, and the beauty of many of them in their butterfly state greatly exceeds it; but the covering which they put on before this change into a fly is poor and mean, when compared to that golden tissue in which the silkworm wraps itself. They indeed come forth in variety of colours, their wings bedropped with gold and scarlet, yet are they but the beings of a summer’s day; both their life and beauty quickly vanish, and they leave no remembrance after them; but the silkworm leaves behind it such beautiful, such beneficial monuments, as at once record both the wisdom of their Creator, and His bounty to man.”
On the importance of the silk itself, Kirby and Spence have the following remarks:—
“To estimate justly the importance of this article, it is not sufficient to view it as an appendage of luxury unrivalled for richness, lustre, and beauty, and without which courts would lose half their splendour; we must consider it what it actually is, as the staple article of cultivation in many large provinces in the south of Europe, amongst the inhabitants of which the prospect of a deficient crop causes as great alarm as a scanty harvest of grain with us; and, after giving employment to tens of thousands in its first production and transportation, as furnishing subsistence to hundreds of thousands more in its final manufacture, and thus becoming one of the most important wheels that give circulation to national wealth.”
