An example of the readiness with which, in these railroad days, a manufacture can be transplanted, was exhibited at Tewkesbury four years ago.  The once-fashionable theatre of that decayed town was being sold by auction; it hung on the auctioneer’s hammer at so trifling a sum that one of the new made M.P.’s of the borough bought it.  Having bought it, for want of some other use he determined to turn it into a silk mill.  In a very short space of time the needful machinery was obtained from Macclesfield, with an overseer.  While the machinery was being erected, a bevy of girls were acquiring the art of silk weaving, and, in less than twelve months, five or six hundred hands were as regularly engaged in this novel process, as if they had been so engaged all their lives.  Without railroads, such an undertaking would have been the work of years, if possible at all.

Raw silk is obtained from Italy, from France in small quantities, as the exportation of the finest silk is forbidden, from China, from India in increasing quantities, and from Brusa in Asia Minor through Constantinople.

The raw silk, imported in the state in which it is wound from the cocoons, has to be twisted into thread, after being dyed, so as to approach the stage of yarn in the cotton manufacture.  This twisting is technically called throwing, and is one of the departments in which the greatest improvements have been introduced, as shown by silk throwers from Macclesfield in the machine department of the Great Exhibition; and, by the improvements, the cost of throwing, or twisting, has been reduced from 10s. per lb. to 3s.

It takes about twelve pounds of cocoons to make one pound of reeled silk, and that pound will produce from fourteen to sixteen yards of gros de Naples.

Many attempts have been made to naturalize the silk-worm in this country, but, after rather large sums have been expended on it, it is now quite clear that, although it be possible to obtain large quantities of silk of a certain quality, the undertaking cannot be made to pay:  the climate is an obstacle.

For centuries the silk-worm was only known to the Chinese,—­the Greeks and Romans used the substance without knowing from what it was produced or whence it came.  In the sixth century, in the reign of Justinian, the eggs of the silk-worm were brought secretly to Constantinople from China by the Nestorian monks in a hollow cane, hatched, and successfully propagated.  For six centuries the breeding of silk-worms was confined to the Greeks of the Lower Empire.  In the twelfth century the art was transferred to Sicily, and thence successively to Italy, Spain, and France.