ays:--

"Nor with Maeonian needle mark the web,
Gathered by Eastern Seres from the trees."

Seneca the Tragedian, "Herc. AEtaeus," 644.[231]

This was, till lately, believed to be only a fiction, intended to hide
the truth and enhance the value of the new Coan material. But it is
now ascertained that some of the wild silk in China is carried by the
silkworm round the trees, wrapping them up, as it were, in large,
untidy cocoons; so that, as usual, tradition had truth for its
foundation.

There was always much mysterious report about the new material.
Dionysius Periegetes tells of a barbarous people called the Seres,
who "renounce the care of sheep and oxen, but who comb the coloured
flowers of the desert, and with them produce woven precious stuffs, of
which they make figured garments, resembling the flowers of the field
in beauty, and in texture the web of the spider."[232]

There is no doubt that as Egypt was the first to weave linen, and
India to produce cotton textiles, so in China originated the material
of silk and its manufacture.

M. Terrien de la Couperie, who has deciphered the Archaic books of the
Chinese Records, sees there excellent linguistic proofs that the
Chinese nation was originally a fragment of the first Babylonian
civilization. He there finds that when these Accadians arrived on the
furthest eastern coast of Asia, they met with and enslaved an
aboriginal race, who already cultivated the silkworm, and wove and
worked its produce, and were called by them "the Embroiderers."[233]

This is supposed to have been an historical event contemporary with
the life of Abraham, and, therefore, 5000 years old.

The Chinese say that Tekin or Sin, the son of Japhet, instructed his
children in painting, sculpture, and embroidery, and in the art of
preparing _silk_ for different woven fabrics.[234]

Whether we are justified or not in believing in so very early a date,
at any rate we must remember that it is now ascertained that silk was
used in China 2600 years before our era.

Auberville says there is a legend that the Empress Si-ling-chi[235]
(2600 B.C.) had the happy inspiration to invent the unwinding of the
cocoon before the insect cut the threads; and for this discovery she
was placed among the divinities.

Before her time, they had certainly for more than 300 years used the
precious material in its mutilated condition.[236]

Some centuries later the Emperor Chan received t