Unravelled dreams : silk and the Atlantic world, 1500-1840

"Spontaneous Generation and Marvellous Transformations Under magnification, the fibres of cotton, linen, and wool appear twisted, hatched, knobbly or scaled. In contrast, silk strands were described in 1665 by the first English micrographer as "small, round, hard, transparent, and to their bigness proportionably stiff, so as each filament preserves its proper Figure, and consequently its vivid reflection intire." So Robert Hooke, a man hardly renowned for his emotional or descriptive eloquence, could not help marvelling at the fibres of silk, which "above those of hairy Stuffs, or Linnen", appeared as if translucent cylinders of coloured gemstones. The same year, across the English Channel, French agronomist Christophle Isnard determined "that nature worked to make silkworms incomparably more admirable than all the other animals on the earth," going so far as to compare the silkworm and its output to the glorious transformations and resurrection of Jesus Christ."