Changa Manga silkworm eggs (about 3 million eggs) from France. To house the worms, he created long sheds from bamboo and dried grass. The worms’ feed consisted entirely of mulberry leaves obtained from felled trees in the forest. The worms fed on 70 hundredweights of leaves a day. In 1916, the Governor of Punjab Sir Michael O'Dwyer visited the silk experiment where the silkworms had started developing cocoons. The governor left pleased with Booth-Tucker’s work. The Salvation Army Silk Camp remained a sustainable venture for a year after the governor’s visit, although changes to the climate later led to its decline. The
Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire The acquisition also broke the Chinese and Persian silk monopolies. The resulting monopoly was a foundation for the Byzantine economy for the next 650 years until its demise in 1204. Silk clothes, especially those dyed in imperial purple, were almost always reserved for the elite in Byzantium, and their wearing was codified in sumptuary laws. Silk production in the region around Constantinople, particularly in Thrace in northern Greece, has continued to the present. Smuggling of silkworm eggs into the Byzantine Empire In the mid-6th century AD, two monks, with the support of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, successfully smuggled silkworm