rom the world. During the year 1860
Great Britain imported or produced a million tons of such fibres, an
amount equal to five million bales of cotton, more than one-half of
which were in cotton alone. These fibres it is our purpose to examine.

* * * * *

The thread of the silk-worm came early into use. The Chinese ascribe its
introduction to the wife of one of their emperors, to whom divine honors
were subsequently paid. Until the Christian era silk was little known in
Europe or Western Asia. It is mentioned but three times in the common
version of the Old Testament, and in each case the accuracy of the
translation is questioned by German critics. It is, however, distinctly
alluded to by St. John, by Aristotle, and by the poets who flourished at
the court of Augustus, Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, and is referred to
by the writers of the first four centuries. Tertullian, in his homily on
Female Attire, tells the ladies,--"Clothe yourselves with the silk of
truth, with the fine linen of sanctity, and the purple of modesty." The
golden-mouthed St. Chrisostom writes in his Homilies,--"Does the rich
man wear silken shawls? His soul is in tatters." "Silken shawls are
beautiful, but they are the production of worms."

The silken thread was early introduced. Galen recommends it for tying
blood-vessels in surgical operations, and remarks that the rich ladies
in the cities of the Roman Empire generally possessed such thread; he
alludes also to shawls interwoven with gold, the material of which is
brought from a distance, and is called _Sericum_, or silk. Down to the
time of the Emperor Aurelian silk was of great value, and used only by
the rich. His biographer informs us that Aurelian neither had himself
in his wardrobe a garment composed wholly of silk, nor presented any to
others, and when his own wife begged him to allow her a single shawl
of purple silk, he replied,--"Far be it from me to permit thread to be
balanced with its weight in gold!"--for a pound of gold was then the
price of a pound of silk.

Silk is mentioned in some very ancient Arabic inscriptions; but down to
the reign of the Emperor Justinian was imported into Europe from the
country of the Seres, a people of Eastern Asia, supposed to be the
Chinese, from, whom it derived its name. During the reign of Justinian
two monks brought the eggs of the silkworm to Byzantium from Serinda in
India, and the manufacture of silk became a