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The under-robe was of soft sea-green bombyx silk, with a broad border, delicately embroidered, of a garland of roses and buds. The peplos was of the same color and decorated to match; costly clasps of mosaic, representing full-blown roses and set in oval gold settings, fastened it on the shoulders.
The praetorians, who had not for many a day seen anything to cause them to forget the motto of the greatest philosopher among their poets never to be astonished at anything repeatedly pushed each other with surprise and admiration; nay, the centurion Julius Martialis, who had just now had a visit in camp from his wife and children, in defiance of orders, while Caesar himself was looking on, struck his fist on his greaves, and, exclaiming loudly, "Look out!" pointed to Seleukus's chariot, for which four runners, in tunics with long sleeves, made of sea-green bombyx, richly embroidered with silver, were making a way through the crowd.
In addition to the Atlas moth and the Mylitta, there are many other Bombycidæ; in Ceylon; and, though the silk of some of them, were it susceptible of being unwound from the cocoon, would not bear a comparison with that of the Bombyx mori, or even of the Tusseh moth, it might still prove to be valuable when carded and spun.
Nor was his gloomy humor at all enlivened when he was left to wait in the anteroom while Julia and the wife of Verus, aided by Balbilla chose for his daughter the finest colored and costliest stuffs of the softest wool, silk, and delicate bombyx tissue.
Then, in fierce haste, she made her throw on her sea-green dress of bombyx silk edged with fine embroidery, and fasten her peplos with the first pins that came to hand; and when the snap of her bracelet of costly sapphires broke, as she herself was fastening it, she flung it back among her other trinkets as she might have tossed an unripe apple back upon a heap.
There was no oscillation of the wings, no tremor of the antennæ, the female of the Great Peacock behaved in a similar fashion. The female Bombyx gradually matured, her tender tissues gradually becoming firmer. By some process of which our scientists have not the least idea she elaborated a mysterious lure which would bring her lovers from the four corners of the sky.
Though a Bombyx be polyphagous in a state of nature, yet I think most species have a tree proper to themselves, on which they are more at home than on any other plant. I should like, if you could find out from some your correspondents in India, on what species of tree Mylitta cocoons are found in the largest numbers, and what is about the greatest number found on a single tree.
An insect of the genius bombyx will seize another of the genus parnopaea, and kill it wherever it finds it, without making any subsequent use of the body; but we know that the last-named insect lies in wait for the eggs of the first, and is therefore the natural enemy of its race. The phenomenon known to stockdrivers and shepherds as "das Biesen des Viehes" affords another example.
As he spoke he waved his goblet aloft, the flute-player, Xuthus, beckoned to the chorus, and the dancer Metrodor, in the guise of a butterfly, led forth a bevy of beautiful girls, who, in the cloud of ample robes of transparent coloured bombyx which floated around them, executed the most graceful figures and now hovered like mists, now flitted to and fro as if borne on wings, affording the most charming variety to the delighted spectators.
He took pains, however, that it should be both soft and elastic. The latter quality he obtained by a careful choice of the bamboos that were to serve as shafts; the former requisite he secured by thickly bedding it with the lopped-off leaves, and adding an upper stratum of cotton, obtained from a species of bombyx growing close at hand, and soft as the down of the eider-duck.
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