[17] Similar companies were formed at Toledo, Zaragoza, Burgos, Seville, and Zarza. For the Crown cedula, dated February 10th, 1748, authorizing the Real Compañía de Comercio y Fábricas of Toledo, see Larruga's Memorias, Vol. VII., p. 63.

[18] Toledo en el Siglo XVI. Miquel y Badía says that in the fifteenth century Toledo, together with Genoa and Venice, manufactured superb velvets, coloured crimson, blue, purple, or yellow, and figured with pineapples or pomegranates (Plate [iv].). The latter tree and fruit are commonly related, in Spain, with the city of Granada; but quite apart from this, the pomegranate was formerly regarded as a symbol of fecundity and life. (See Goblet d'Alviella, La Migration des Symboles, p. 184, and also Madame Errera's Catalogue, No. 50.) In these velvets the gold thread is woven with consummate skill, and forms, in the costliest and most elaborate specimens, a groundwork of exceedingly small rings. These fabrics were used as hangings for beds and walls, as well as for the clothing of great lords and ladies. Touching the use of silk for certain articles of dress, an amusing story is told in the MS. account of Valladolid, published by Gayangos in the Revista de España. “One day, Don Pedro de Medicis is reported to have paid a visit to a married lady, to whom he had presented some damask curtains, and he was wearing at the time some taffeta hose which made a creaking as he walked. The lady came out of her room, and, finding him in one of the lower apartments, exclaimed, ‘Why do you come here at such an hour, and with that silk on you which creaks so loudly? Take care my husband does not hear it.’ Whereto the gentleman replied; ‘Good God, madam, is it possible that the two hundred yards of damask which I gave you for that curtain have made no noise at all, but that a mere four yards of simple taffeta about my breeches should put you in such consternation?’”

[19] “The mulberry of Valencia is the white, as being most suitable to a well-watered plain. In Granada they give the preference to the black, as thriving well in elevated stations, as more durable, more abundant in leaves, and yielding a much finer and more valuable silk. But then it does not begin bearing till it is about twenty years of age. In this province they reckon that five trees should produce two pounds of silk.

“I had the curiosity to examine their method of feeding the silkworms. These industrious spinners are spread upon wicker shelves, which are placed one above the other, all round, and likewise in the middle of each apartment, so as to leave room only for the good woman to pass with their provisions. In one house I saw the produce of six ounces of seed, and was informed that to every ounce, during their feeding season, they allow sixty arrobas of leaves, valued at two pounds five. Each ounce of seed is supposed to yield ten pounds of silk, at twelve ounces to the pound. March 28th, the worms began to hatch, and May 22nd they went up to spin. On the eleventh day, from the time that they were hatched, they slept; and on the fourteenth, they awoke to eat again, receiving food twice a day till the twenty-second day. Having then slept a second time, without interruption, for three days, they were fed thrice a day; and thus alternately they continued eating eight days and sleeping three, till the forty-seventh day; after which they ate voraciously for ten days, and not being stinted, consumed sometimes from thirty to fifty arrobas in four and twenty hours. They then climbed up into rosemary bushes, fixed for that purpose between the shelves, and began to spin.

“Upon examination, they appear evidently to draw out two threads by the same operation, and to glue these together, covering them with wax. This may be proved by spirit of wine, which will dissolve the wax, and leave the thread. Having exhausted her magazine, the worm changes her form and becomes a nymph, until the seventy-first day from the time that the little animal was hatched, when she comes forth with plumage, and having found her mate, begins to lay her eggs. At the end of six days from this period of existence, having answered the end of their creation, they both lie down and die. This would be the natural progress; but, to preserve the silk, the animal is killed by heat, and the cones being thrown into boiling water, the women and children wind off the silk.”—Townsend; Journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787; Vol. III., pp. 264–266.

[20] They certainly were not unknown at Valencia. I have before me a copy of the work, Disertacion descriptiva de la Hilaza de la Seda, segun el antiguo modo de hilar y el nuevo llamado de Vaucanson, written by the priest Francisco Ortells y Gombau, and published at Valencia in 1783, by order of the Royal Council of Commerce and Agriculture. This book, which clearly sets forth the superiority of Vaucanson's method over those which had preceded it, states that at first the Valencians were strongly opposed to the Vaucanson wheel, believing that it caused a loss and waste of silk. Probably the real reason was that it prevented the manufacturers from adding spurious weight to the silk by mixing it with oil. This practice, says Ortells, was then “so widespread an evil in the kingdom of Valencia, that there is hardly anybody who does not resort to it: notwithstanding it has been so often prohibited by His Majesty, yet openly, where all the world may witness, do the workers spin with much oil added to the silk.”

The Vaucanson form of wheel was also more expensive. In the region of Valencia its cost was about thirty pesos, that of the older wheels being only fifteen or sixteen pesos. However, this difficulty was not insuperable, for in the year 1779 the Royal Council of Commerce presented a hundred and twenty Vaucanson wheels to the peasants who had raised a minimum crop of a hundred pounds of silk, requiring, in return, that the recipients of the gift should spin not less than fifty pounds of silk per annum.

[21] At the time when Vaucanson's wheels began to be used in Spain, silk was spun by men all over the Peninsula, except in the immediate neighbourhood of Valencia (Orteils; Hilaza de la Seda, pp. 134 et seq.) In every other region devoted to this industry such as the valley of the Jucar and the Huertas of Orihuela and Murviedro, as well as in the factories of Toledo, Seville, Granada, Cordova, Jaén, Baeza, Talavera, and Priego, the spinning was performed by men exclusively. Women, however, were often engaged in harvesting the cocoons.

[22] “I should here remark that the silk which is spun and twisted according to the method of Vaucanson, forms a fabric a third part closer and stronger than ordinary silk-stuffs.”

[23] This man, Joseph Lapayese or La Payessa, did not initiate Vaucanson's method in this region. He succeeded a Frenchman named Reboul, who, in 1769, and holding privileges from the Crown, began to work with Vaucanson wheels at Vilanesa, near Valencia—the same place which Bourgoing calls La Milanesa. Both the king and his minister of finance, Don Miguel de Muzquiz, were keenly interested in these experiments, and Muzquiz, who owned an estate near the town of Sueca, in the same neighbourhood, imported four more of the new wheels there, under Reboul's direction. This craftsman, however, was not successful. Lapayese, who came after him and enjoyed the same Crown privileges, made considerably better progress, his efforts being seconded by the Royal Junta, the archbishop, and other bodies or individuals of Valencia, who awarded prizes of wheels and money to the best workers in the new style.