What have you to say, who disbelieve the assertion of the Apostle Paul concerning the change at the resurrection, when you see many of the inhabitants of the air changing their forms? Consider, for example, the account of the horned worm of India, which (i. e. the silk-worm) having first changed into a caterpillar (_eruca_, or _veruca_), then in process of time becomes a cocoon (_bombylius_, or _bombulio_), and does not continue even in this form, but assumes light and expanded wings. Ye women, who sit winding upon bobbins the produce of these animals, namely the threads, which the Seres send to you for the manufacture of fine garments, bear in mind the change of form in this creature; derive from it a clear conception of the resurrection; and discredit not that transformation which Paul announces to us all.--Yates’s Translation. When St. Basil says of the new-born moth, that “it assumes light and expanded wings,” the beauty of the comparison in illustrating the Christian doctrine of the resurrection is enhanced, when we consider that in its _wild_ state the moth flies very well, although, when domesticated, its flight is weak and its wings small and shrivelled[63]: but still more beautiful does the figure become, if we suppose a reference to those larger and more splendid Phalænæ which produce the coarser kinds of silk in India, and probably in China also. [63] The Phalæna Atlas, apparently a native of China, measures eight inches across the wings from tip to tip. Basil is the _first_ writer, who distinctly mentions the change of the silk-worm from a Chrysalis to a moth. In his application of that fact he addresses himself to his countrywomen in Asia Minor, and his language represents them sitting and winding on bobbins the raw silk obtained from the Seres and designed to be afterwards woven into cloth. Between these two authors, Aristotle and Basil, we observe a difference of phraseology which appears deserving of notice. While they both describe the women, not as spinning the silk, but as _winding it on bobbins_, they designate the material so wound by two different names. Basil uses the term νήματα, which might be meant to imply that the silk came from the Seres in skeins as it comes to us from China: Aristotle, on the contrary, uses the term βομβύκια, which can only refer to the state of silk before it is wound into skeins. As it might appear impossible to convey it in this state to Cos, we shall here insert from the authorities already quoted, the Chinese Missionaries, an account of the process by which the cocoons are prepared for winding, and it will then be seen, that the cocoons might have been transported to any part of the world.