We owe to Aristotle the earliest notice of the silkworm, and although his account be incorrect it has much value, because he gives us information about the original importation of raw silk into the western world. Brought from China through India the silk came by water across the Arabian ocean, up the Red Sea, and thence over the isthmus of Suez (or perhaps rather by the overland route, through Persia) to the small but commercial island of Cos, lying off the coast of Asia minor. Pamphile, the daughter of Plates, is reported to have first woven silk in Cos. Here, by female hands, were wrought those light thin gauzes which became so fashionable; these were stigmatized by some of the Latin poets, as well as by heathen moralists, as anything but seemly for women’s wear. Tibullus speaks of them; and Seneca condemns them: “I behold” he says “silken garments, if garments they can be called, which are a protection neither for the body nor for shame.” Later still, and in the Christian era, we have an echo to the remarks of Seneca in the words of Solinus: “This is silk, in which at first women but now even men have been led, by their cravings after luxury, to show rather than to clothe their bodies.” Looking over very ancient manuscripts we often find between richly gilt illuminations, to keep them from harm or being hurt through the rubbings of the next leaf, a covering of the thinnest gauze, just as we now put sheets of silver paper for that purpose over engravings. It is not impossible that some at least of these may be shreds from the translucent textiles which found favour in the world for so long a time during the classic period. The curious example of such gauzy interleafings in the manuscript of Theodulph, now at Puy en Velay, will occur perhaps to more than one of our readers. It may be easily imagined that silken garments were brought, at an early period, to imperial Rome. Not only, however, were the prices asked for them so high that few could afford to buy such robes for their wives and daughters, but, at first, they were looked upon as quite unbecoming for men’s wear; hence, by a law of the Roman senate under Tiberius, it was enacted: “Ne vestis serica vicos fœdaret.” While noticing how womanish Caligula became in his dress Suetonius remarks his silken attire: “Aliquando sericatus et cycladatus.” An exception was made by some emperors for very great occasions, and both Titus and Vespasian wore dresses of silk when they celebrated at Rome their triumph over Judæa. Heliogabalus was the first emperor who wore whole silk for clothing. Aurelian, on the other hand, neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment wholly silk nor gave one to be worn by another. When his own wife begged him to allow her to have a single mantle of purple silk he replied, “Far be it from us to allow thread to be reckoned worth its weight in gold.” For then a pound of gold was the price of a pound of silk.