Wool and Other Animal Fibers
WOOL AND OTHER ANIMAL FIBERS 251 it was introduced into India in the fourth century under the romantic circumstances of a marriage between Chinese and Indian royal families. At the request of Byzantine Emper- or Justinian in A.D. 552, two monks Wool and Other made the perilous journey and risked smuggling silkworm eggs out of China in the hollow of their bamboo canes, and so the secret finally left Asia. Animal Fibers Constantinople remained the center of Western silk culture for more than 600 years, although raw silk was also HORACE G. PORTER and produced in Sicily, southern Spain, BERNICE M. HORNBECK northern Africa, and Greece. As a result of military victories in the early 13 th century, Venetians obtained some silk districts in Greece. By the 14th century, the knowledge of seri- ANIMAL FIBERS are the hair, wool, culture reached England, but despite feathers, fur, or filaments from sheep, determined efforts it was not particu- goats, camels, horses, cattle, llamas, larly successful. Nor was it successful birds, fur-bearing animals, and silk- in the British colonies in the Western worms. Hemisphere. Let us consider silk first. There are three main, distinct A legend is that in China in 2640 species of silkworms—Japanese, Chi- B.C. the Empress Si-Ling Chi noticed nese, and European. Hybrids have been a beautiful cocoon in her garden and developed by crossing different com- accidentally dropped it into a basin of binations of the three. warm water. She caught the loose end The production of silk for textile of the filament that made up the co- purposes involves two operations: coon and unwound the long, lustrous Sericulture, or the raising of the silk- strand.
[Show full text]