SERES, a people of the Farther Asia, bounded on the west by Scythia without Imans, on the north and east by Terra Incognita, and on the south by India beyond the Ganges. According to these limits, their country answers nearly to Cathay or Northern China. Mela places them between the Indi and Scythæ, and perhaps beyond the Indi, if we distinguish them from the Sine. The ancients commend them for their cotton manufactures, different from the produce of the bombyces or silk-worms, called seres by the Greeks; and hence serica means silk.