DISCOVERY OF SILK AND SATIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3233, 10 November 1881, Page 4

DISCOVERY OF SILK AND SATIN.

The discovery of silk is attributed to one of the wives of the Empevov of China. Hoang-ti, who reigned about two thousand years before the Christian era ; and since that time a special spot has been'allotted in the gardens of the Chinese royal palace to tha cultivation of the mulberry-tree and to the keeping of silk-worms. Persian monks who came to Constantinople revealed to the Emperor .Justinian the secret of the production of silk, and gave him some silkworms. From Greece the art passed into Italy at the end of the thirteenth century. When the popes left Rome to settle at Avignon, Prance, they introduced into that •ountry the seoret which had by the Italians and Louis XI, established at Tours a manufactory of silk fabrics. Prancis I. founded the Lyons silk worms, which to this day have kept the first rank. Henry 11. of Prance Jwore, at the wedding of his sister, the first pair of silk hose ever made. The ■word "satin," which in the original was applied to all silk stuffs in general, has since the laßt century been used to designate only tissues whioh present a lustred surface. The discovery of this particular brilliant stuff was accidental. Octavio Mai, a silk-weaver, finding business very dull, and ndt knowing what to invent to give a new impulse to the trade, was one day pacing to and fro before his loom. Every time he passed the machine, with no definite object m view, he pulled little threads from the warp and put them to his mouth, which Boon after he spat out. Latter on he found the little ball of silk on the floor of his workshop, and was attracted by the brilliant appearance of the threads. He repeated the experiment, and by using certain mucilaginous preparations, succeded in giving satin to the world.