Excerpt from The Story of Silk Cheney Silks
In the last spring month the young empress was wont to purity herself and offer a sacrifice to the goddess of the silk worms. She herself would go to the fields and gather mulberry leaves. The raising of the silk worms was so important that at this season she would dispense with the waiting women who sewed and embroidered for her, and forbid similar work for the noble ladies and ministers' wives in order that all might give their attention to the culture of the worms. As this suggests, the silk industry in ancient China was considered so vital to the prosperity of the people as to be interconnected with various religious rites.
From a compilation made by the Chinese government of the early notices and rules in regard to silk culture, it is possible to get a very good idea of the methods they employed even in the earliest, as well as mediaeval, times. There are also several paintings on antique porcelains and a number of quaint wood cuts by ancient Chinese artists, which serve to visualize the industry and give something of its atmosphere as it existed in those far off days.
Low-Show, for example, in 1210 produced a whole series of 46 wood cuts showing the processes of agriculture and silk culture which had already been in use from time immemorial.
The industry naturally fell into the great divisions of Chinese Industry The Mulberry Tree raising the mulberry trees, producing cocoons, reeling, and weaving the silk.
It was early recognized that there were two great species of mulberry trees, - the loo, or large mulberry, which was common in the north, and the king, or dwarf, which was native to the south. The king was more hardy, but the loo had larger and more abundant leaves. For this reason the Chinese early learned to graft a slip from the large on to one from the dwarf mulberry, and to raise the trees from such slips, with the dwarf one furnishing the root. Oil cakes and decayed fish were used for fertilizer. As the tree grew it was carefully pruned by cutting off the central branches, so as to make it spread and increase the foliage.
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