[46] Ib. p. 304.
The breeding of the worm and the manufacture of its silk both spread themselves with steady though slow steps over most of those countries which skirt the shores of the Mediterranean; so that, by the tenth century, those processes had reached from the far east to the uttermost western limits of that same sea. Even then, and a long time after, the natural history of the silkworm became known but to a very few. Our aforesaid countryman, Alexander Neckham, made Abbot of Cirencester, A.D. 1213, was, it is likely, the first who, while he had learned, tried in his popular work, “De Natura Rerum,” to help others to understand the habits of the insect: “Materiam vestium sericarum contexit vermis qui bombex dicitur. Foliis celsi, quæ vulgo morus dicitur, vescitur, et materiam serici digerit; postquam vero operari cœperit, escam renuit, labori delicioso diligentem operam impendens. Calathi parietes industrius textor circuit, lanam educens crocei coloris quæ nivei candoris efficitur per ablutionem, antequam tinctura artificialis superinduitur. Consummato autem opere nobilis textoris, thecam in opere proprio involutam centonis in modum subintrat jamque similis papilioni, &c.”[47]
[47] Ed. T. Wright, p. 272.
Of those several raw materials that have, from the earliest periods, been employed in weaving, though not in such frequency as silk, one is
Gold,
which, when judiciously brought in, brings with it, not a barbaric, but artistical richness.
The earliest written notice we have about the employment of this precious metal in the loom, or of the way in which it was wrought for such a purpose, we find set forth in the Pentateuch, where Moses tells us that he (Beseleel) made of violet and purple, scarlet and fine linen, the vestments for Aaron to wear when he ministered in the holy places. So he made an ephod of gold, violet, and purple, and scarlet twice dyed, and fine twisted linen, with embroidered work; and he cut thin plates of gold and drew them small into strips, that they might be twisted with the woof of the aforesaid colours.[48] Instead of “strip,” the authorized version says, “wire,” another translation reads “thread;” but neither can be right, for both of these English words mean a something round or twisted in the shape given to the gold before being wove, whereas the metal must have been worked in quite flat, as we learn from the text.
[48] Exodus xxxix. 1, 2, 3.
This brings us to a short notice of