of those of India and China. From this period the smuggling of silks from France became extensive, reaching, it is said, to the value of £500,000 per annum.
In France a disaster at the beginning of the eighteenth century gave a new impulse to sericulture in the south. The winter of 1709 was of exceptional severity, and froze the olive trees of Languedoc and Provence. The farmers, obliged to root out their stricken olives, replaced them by mulberries, and the rearing of silkworms, the spinning and weaving of the silk made rapid progress. From this time sericulture issued from a period of groping and hesitation to become a standard industry. The production of cocoons rose to six and seven millions of kilogrammes between 1760 and 1790, again to slacken during the period of revolution. Nor were the first years of the nineteenth century, marked as they were by the great wars of the Empire, favourable to the industry. But an event that had considerable influence on the destinies of agricultural France had taken place. The lands of the clergy and of the emigrated nobility had been declared national property, and had been sold at ridiculously low prices to the peasants on account of the depreciation of the paper money of the period, the assignats. The peasants worked with enthusiasm and energy on the land as proprietors where they had lived painfully as common labourers. Great plantations were made on ground newly cleared, and so soon as peace gave the people breathing time, the production of France doubled as by enchantment. From 500,000 kilogrammes, the output of silk passed to a million, between 1826 and 1830, and between 1840 and 1854 it grew to two millions.
