mportant article of export even to France.

An example of the readiness with which, in these railroad days, a manufacture
can be transplanted, was exhibited at Tewkesbury four years ago. The once-
fashionable theatre of that decayed town was being sold by auction; it hung
on the auctioneer's hammer at so trifling a sum that one of the new made
M.P.'s of the borough bought it. Having bought it, for want of some other
use he determined to turn it into a silk mill. In a very short space of time
the needful machinery was obtained from Macclesfield, with an overseer. While
the machinery was being erected, a bevy of girls were acquiring the art of
silk weaving, and, in less than twelve months, five or six hundred hands were
as regularly engaged in this novel process, as if they had been so engaged
all their lives. Without railroads, such an undertaking would have been the
work of years, if possible at all.

Raw silk is obtained from Italy, from France in small quantities, as the
exportation of the finest silk is forbidden, from China, from India in
increasing quantities, and from Brusa in Asia Minor through Constantinople.

The raw silk, imported in the state in which it is wound from the cocoons,
has to be twisted into thread, after being dyed, so as to approach the stage
of yarn in the cotton manufacture. This twisting is technically called
throwing, and is one of the departments in which the greatest improvements
have been introduced, as shown by silk throwers from Macclesfield in the
machine department of the Great Exhibition; and, by the improvements, the
cost of throwing, or twisting, has been reduced from 10s. per lb. to 3s.

It takes about twelve pounds of cocoons to make one pound of reeled silk, and
that pound will produce from fourteen to sixteen yards of gros de Naples.

Many attempts have been made to naturalize the silk-worm in this country,
but, after rather large sums have been expended on it, it is now quite clear
that, although it be possible to obtain large quantities of silk of a certain
quality, the undertaking cannot be made to pay: the climate is an obstacle.

For centuries the silk-worm was only known to the Chinese,--the Greeks and
Romans used the substance without knowing from what it was produced or whence
it came. In the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian, the eggs of the
silk-worm were brought secretly to Constantinople from China by the Nestorian
monks in a hollow cane, hatched, an