The English is derived by the change of r and l from sericum, the manufacture of the Chinese (Seres): Revelation 18:12. Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. is the first who positively mentions the import of the raw material to the island Cos in the Mediterranean (H. A. 5:19). In Proverbs 31:22 (shesh) translated "fine linen," not silk. The texture silk was probably known much earlier in western Asia, considering its intercourse with the far East by various routes, namely, from southern China by India and the Persian gulf, or across the Indus through Persia, or by Bactria the route of central Asia, for the SINIM (Isaiah 49:12) are the Chinese. Meshi, the other Hebrew term for silk, occurs in Ezekiel 16:10; Ezekiel 16:13, from maashah "to draw," fine drawn silk (Pliny 6:20; 11:26, describes the manner). The Bombyx mori, the caterpillar of a sluggish moth, feeding on the mulberry tree, produces the oval-yellow cocoon of silk wound around its own body.