The Epic of Silk

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7323, 5 September 1930, Page 11

The Epic of Silk

The maker of the cocoon is a native of China. As usual a woman wa3 at the beginning of the whole silk business. Wo find that, a little matter of 4531 years ago, Si-ling, the wife of tho Emperor lloang-ti, ono of tho three most famous women of Chinese history, be- ' gan cultivating tho white mulberry in her Chinese garden, so that the little pmhead-sdzed grub of tho Bombyx Mori, or whatever she called the silkworm in those far-off misty days, might eat and eat of its suceulency and wax fatter and fatter, and bigger and bigger, until, like the little boy in tho nursery rhyme, it “burst its outer coat of skin and hatches” itself, a spinner of silk with which to adorn the enterprising and beauty-loving Empress. She it was who cultivated the mulberry trees and encouraged all the people, both high and low, to do likewise. She studied the little spinner, learned how to rear it and to unwind its silk! Then she invented tho loom and encouraged the weaving of the wonderful fabrics which found their way, for fabulous sums, into the palaces of India and Persia and far .distant Greece, where they were considered priceless treasures.

For centuries the cultivation of the silkworm was a royal industry, Empresses tending tho precious grub and developing tho cult in all 1 its branches until 4 what was once an Empress’s pastime became an Imperial art of an Imperial people. Not only Chinese Empresses and all the ladies of the nobility, but even the peasant women of scattered countrysides have practised regularly the art of sericulture which for centuries was known only to China. The secret was guarded until the transferred allegi-. anc>e of a Chincso Princess caused her to smuggle the silkworm eggs, the worms, and mulberry seeds to the homo of her new lord, an Indian Prince.— Grace Thompson Seton, in “Chinese Lanterns. ’ ’