She cultivates India corn, which grows with vast reeds, which is of great use; and has attempted the culture of rice, and some other things upon boggy ground, with tolerable success. As our cork used to come from France, and now grows in Italy, she has tried it here, where it thrives amazingly; it resembles the evergreen oak, and bears acorns. When you strip other trees of their bark, they die; but this grows stronger, and produces a new coat. She leaves nothing unattempted which has a chance of becoming useful. She also procured sheep from Norway, which are peculiar from having four horns, and being spotted like deer, with a coat of substance betwixt the hair and wool, which is admirable for many uses.
Edward IV has been greatly censured, as taking a very impolitic and injurious measure in making a present to the King of Spain of some Cotswold sheep; the breed of which has been very detrimental to the English woollen manufacture, which has been a national branch of trade ever since. The celebrated Buffon affirms, that our sheep are very far removed from their natural state; from which it has been the usual course of things to decline.
Lady Frances cultivates silk-worms. The ancient Romans for a long time never dreamed that silk could be produced in their country; and the first silk ever seen in Greece, was after the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great. From thence it was imported into Italy, but was sold at the rate of an equal weight of gold.[12]
The Persians being the only people of whom it was to be had, would not permit a single egg or worm to be carried out of their country. Hence the ancient Greeks and Romans were so little acquainted with the nature of silk, that they imagined it grew like a vegetable. Holosericum, or a stuff made of silk only, was worn by none but ladies of the first rank.[13] But men of the greatest quality, and even princes, were contented with subsericum, or a stuff made of half silk; to that Heliogabulus is remarked for being the first who wore holosericum[14]. In the reign of the emperor Justinian, a trial was made for bringing silk-worms alive to Constantinople, but without success; however, two monks who had been employed in the affair, repeated the trial with silk-worms eggs.[15] The experiment succeeded so well, that to this Constantinopolitan colony, all the silk-worms, and silk manufactures in Europe owe their existence and origin. Till the middle of the twelfth century, all the silken stuffs at Rome and other parts of Europe were of Grecian manufacture. But Roger I. King of Sicily, about the year 1138, invading Greece with a fleet of vessels with two or three benches of oars, called Galeæ or Sagittæ (from whence are derived the words galley and saique) and sacking and plundering Corinth, Thebes, and Athens, brought away to Palermo, among other prisoners, a great number of silk weavers to instruct his subjects in that art. From them, as Otto Trisingensis de gestis Frederici, lib. I. cap. 23. informs us, the Italians soon learnt the method of manufacturing silk.