The City of Turfan in Little Bucharia was for a long time the rendezvous of the caravans coming from the West, and the principal market for Chinese silks. It was the metropolis of the Seres of Upper Asia, or the Serica of Ptolemy. The Seres having been expelled their country by the Huns, established themselves in Great Bucharia and in India. It is from one of their colonies (of Ser-indi), that the Grecian Missionaries, in the time of Justinian, brought the eggs of the silk-worm to Constantinople. A diploma of ETHELBERT, King of Kent, mentions “Armilausia holoserica,” proving that silk was known in England at the end of the sixth century[81]. The usual dress of the earliest French kings seems to have been a linen shirt and drawers of the same material next to the skin; over these a tunic, probably of fine wool, which had a border of silk, ornamented sometimes with gold or precious stones; and upon this a sagum, which was fastened with a fibula on the right shoulder. Eginhart informs us, that Charlemagne wore a tunic, or vest, with a silken border (_limbo serico_)[82]. [81] Dugdale’s Monasticon, vol. i. p. 24. Adelung’s Glossarium Manuale, v. Armilausia. [82] Examples of it may be seen, I. in the two figures of Charlemagne, executed in mosaic during his life-time, one of which is preserved in the Penitentiary of St. John Lateran at Rome, and both of these are described by Spon in his Miscellanea Eruditæ Antiquitatus (p. 284.); II. in the figure of Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne, which is in the splendid copy of the Latin Gospels made for his use, now preserved in the library at Munich, and which may be seen engraved in Sanft’s Dissertation on that MS. (p. 42.); III. in the figure of an early French king engraved from a MS. by Baluzius in his Capitularia Regum Francorum (tom. ii. p. 1308.); and IV. in the first volume of Montfaucon’s Monumens de la Monarchie Française. ALDHELMUS, CL., A. D. 680. This author, who died Abbot of Sherburn, was among the most learned men of his age. In his Ænigmas, which are written in tetrastics, we find the following description of the silk-worm. As it is scarcely possible that he could have seen this creature, we have cause to admire both the ingenuity and general accuracy of his lines. The ascending to the tops of thorns or shrubs, such as “genistæ,” to which the animal may attach its cocoon (_globulum_), has not been noticed by any earlier author. De Bombycibus. Annua dum redeunt texendi tempora telas, Lurida setigeris replentur viscera filis; Moxque genistarum frondosa cacumina scando, Ut globulus fabricans cum fati sorte quiescam. _Maxima Bibl. Vet. Patrum, tom._ xiii. _p._ 25. Soon as the year brings round the time to spin, My entrails dark with hairy threads are fill’d: Then to the leafy lops of shrubs I climb, Make my cocoon, and rest by fate’s decree.