Primos hominum Seres cognoscimus, qui, aquarum aspergine inundatis frondibus, vellera arborum adminiculo depectunt liquoris, et lanuginis teneram subtilitatem humore domant ad obsequium. Hoc illud est sericum, in quo ostentare potius corpora quàm vestire, primò feminis, nunc etiam viris persuasit luxuriæ libido. Cap. 1.
The Seres first, having inundated the foliage with aspersions of water, combed down fleeces from trees by the aid of a fluid, and subdued to their purposes the tender and subtile down by the use of moisture. The substance so prepared is silk; that material in which at first women, but now even men, have been persuaded by the eagerness of luxury rather to display their bodies, than to clothe them.
AMMIANUS MARCELLINUS.
This historian describes the Seres as “a quiet and inoffensive people who, avoiding all quarrels with their neighbors, are exempt from the distresses and alarms of war, and not being under the necessity of using offensive arms, do not even know their use, and occupy a fertile country under a delicious and healthy climate. He represents them as passing their happy life in the most perfect tranquillity and the most delicious repose amidst shady thickets refreshed by pleasant zephyrs, and where the soil furnishes so soft a wool, that after having been sprinkled with water and combed, it forms cloths resembling silk.”
Marcellinus proceeds to describe the Seres as being content with their own felicitous condition, and so reserved in their intercourse with the rest of mankind, that when foreigners venture within their boundaries for wrought and unwrought silk, and other valuable articles, they consider the price offered in silence, and transact their business without exchanging a word; a mode of traffic which is still practised in some eastern countries.
Macpherson, in the Annals of Commerce, a very valuable work, thinks that according to all appearances, the Seres were themselves the authors of this story, in order to make strangers believe that their country enjoyed all these benefits by the peculiar blessing of heaven, and that no other nation could participate in them.
The remarks of Solinus and Ammianus conspire to show, how much more common silk had become about the end of the third century, being then worn, at least with a warp of cheaper materials, by men as well as by women, and not being confined to the noble and the wealthy. These authors likewise dilate upon the use of showers of water to detach silk from the trees on which it was found. According to Pliny and Solinus, water was also employed after the silk was gathered from the trees[45]: and probably the fact was so. Silk, as it comes from the worm, contains a strong gum, which would be dissolved by the showers of water dashed against the trees, and thus the cocoons, being loosened from the leaves and twigs, would be easily collected. In the subsequent processes, water would be further useful in enabling the women to spin the silk or to wind it upon bobbins.
[45] “The remaining shores are occupied by savage nations, as the Melanchlæni and Coraxi, Dioscurias, a City of the Colchians, near the river Anthemus, being now deserted, although formerly so illustrious, that Timosthenes has recorded that three hundred nations used to resort to it speaking different languages; and that business was afterwards transacted on our part through the medium of one hundred and thirty interpreters.”
It may be observed that in this use of water art only follows nature. When the moth is ready to leave its cell, it always softens the extremity of it by emitting a drop of fluid, and thus easily obtains for itself a passage. In the third volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society (p. 543.), Colonel Sykes gives the following account of the process by which the moth of the Kolisurra silk-worm liberates itself from confinement. “It discharges from its mouth a liquor, which dissolves or loosens that part of the cocoon adjoining to the cord which attaches it to the branch, causing a hole, and admitting of the passage of the moth. The solvent property of this liquid is very remarkable; for that part of the cocoon, against which it is directed, although previously as hard as a piece of wood, becomes soft and pervious as wetted brown paper.”
In the seventh volume of the Linnæan Transactions, is an account by Dr. Roxburgh of the Tusseh silk-worm. Both species are natives of Bengal. The cocoons require to be immersed in cold water before the silk can be obtained from them. In the latter species it is too delicate to be wound from the cocoons, and is therefore spun like cotton. Thus manufactured it is so durable, that the life of one person is seldom sufficient to wear out a garment made of it, and the same piece descends from mother to daughter. (See [Chap. VIII.] of this Part.)