According to Chinese authority, the use of silk dates from 2650 B.C., and it is generally conceded that, in point of age, it stands midway among the great textiles, wool and cotton having preceded it, while flax, hemp and other fibrous plants followed shortly in its train. The first patron of the silkworm was Hoang-Ti, Third Emperor of China, and his Empress, Si-Ling-Chi, was the first practical silkworm breeder and silk reeler. It is related of her that she was once walking in the palace gardens when she discovered a strange and repulsive looking worm. It was small, of a pale green color, and was feeding greedily on a mulberry leaf. She interested the Emperor in this strange creature, and, at the Emperor’s suggestion, took the fine silken web which the worm finally spun, and was the first to successfully reel the new filament and weave it into cloth. So beneficial to the nation was her work considered that her gratified subjects bestowed upon her the divine title of “Goddess of the Silkworms,” and to this day the Chinese celebrate in her honor the “Con-Con Feast,” which takes place during the season in which the silkworm eggs are hatched. In accounting for the presence of silkworms in the garden of this early empress, we can rightly conclude that certain parts of China have always abounded in forests of mulberry trees, and that the worms themselves had existed in great numbers in a wild state and attached their cocoons to the trees for ages before any use was discovered for their web. In fact, such wild silkworms not only abound in China to-day, but have also been found in Southern and Eastern Asia, inhabiting the jungles of India, Pegu, Siam and Cochin China, but the cocoons of these worms are, naturally, of a very inferior quality, and are only used for the crudest kind of work. [Illustration: Illustration by courtesy The Brainerd & Armstrong Silk Co. THE INTRODUCTION OF SILK INTO EUROPE Pilgrims brought silkworm eggs in their staffs, together with the branches of mulberry trees, from China to the Court of Justinian at Byzantine, A.D. 555. The penalty for taking silkworm eggs out of China was death. The accompanying illustration is a reproduction of a mural painting on rep in the Royal Textile Museum at Crefeld, Germany, one of the great silk textile centers of the world. The artist shows the pilgrims presenting the silkworm eggs and the mulberry branches to Justinian, beside whom, just in the act of rising, is his famous queen Theodora.]