Silk culture from the time of Hoang-Ti became one of the cherished secrets of China. The headquarters of the industry was in the Province of Chen Tong, where was produced the silk for the royal family. In time the silk and stuffs of China became articles of export to various portions of Asia. Long journeys were made by caravans, occupying two-thirds of a year in going from the cities of China to those of Syria, but the price obtained there exceeded the expense of the journey, and thus left a large margin of profit to the merchants. In this manner, for one thousand years, the Chinese sent their silk to the Persians who, without knowing how or from what it was made, carried it to the Western nations. So carefully did the Orientals guard their secret, that there is reason to believe that Aristotle was the first person in the occidental world to learn the true origin of the wrought silk from Persia. In commenting on the silk which was brought from that country on the return of Alexander’s victorious army, he described the silkworm as a “horned insect,” passing through several transformations, which produced “bomby-kia,” as he called the silk. But the classics must convince one that Aristotle’s discovery did not at once become matter of current knowledge. In fact, for five hundred years after Aristotle’s time the common theory of the origin of silk among the Greeks and Romans was that it was either “a fleece which grew upon a tree” (thus confounding it with cotton), or a fibre obtained from the inner bark of a tree; and some, deceived by the glossy and silky fibres of the seed vessels of the plant that corresponds to our milk or silk weed, believed it to be the product of some plant or flower. So Virgil, in speaking of silk, says, “the Seres comb the delicate fleecings from the leaves.”