The Mankato free press. [volume] (Mankato, Blue Earth County, Minn.) 1879-1924, 1885-07-31

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berry vines with summer and autumn
foliage, blossoms, and fruit. About
$18 paid for this lounge, which was
both pretty and comfortable, and tho
( cherry and green room was delightful
ly cool-looking and airy.
The room over the parlor had SINH
lar bay window, and was furnished in
pink and walnut. A wide bureau, with
a good glass and bedstead to match, n
table, chairs, and rocker were procured
for $780, On tho floor, which had been
stained, there was Kensington rug
q soft gray ground, with little conven-
tional clusters of reddish flowers on it
the price OF which was 1927.
An exceptionally soft, pretty cretonne
appeared almost without looking for 10.
and at so moderate a price that tho
lounge covered with ii did not cost
over $l7. 1t was box lounge, exactly
like that in the large room, and tho
cretonne had a pale-salmon ground,
with pink roses and buds, and green
leaves that looked as though they were
painted on it. The curtains too were
made Of this and lined with pink sile-
STA, but to prevent them from looking
heavy only one width of cretonne was
used each side, and the curtains were
we'll drawn back. The cost of these
curtains. lining, making and all, was
about 50 window. The table to
match the furniture was placed in the
bay window, with very pretty tete-a-
tete breakfast set on it, while square,
fine table of good size was covered with
the rose cretOnne and placed in the
middle of the room. Such table
costs very little-not over $3.50 when
quite finished; but its convenience is
great, as it will hold the last papers
and magazines, my lady's work-basket.
and variety of miscellaneous articles.
Besides, it takes off the empty look
from large room.
The remaining bedroom was in ash
and blue, and a very pretty bureau,
bedstead, table, three chairs, and rock
or were found for $5S. This was very
low for such well-made and cookbook
ing furniture; and rug of light pea
cOck-blue, with pink and white daisies
mingled in the pattern, displayed it to
great advantage. The curtains were
of a peculiar material in narrow, cross
stripes, blue and brown alternately,
with gilt and silver threads woven in.
II was bargain, as it had lain for a
long while on the bridesmaids shelves,
but it proved just the thing for the blue
room. The cost of these curtains did
not exceed s. a window. The mantel-
shelf and table were covered with blue
felt, with macramc borders, and bows
of blue satin ribbon. A Turkish towel,
in squares of blue, white, and olive,
was provided for tho bureau, and q
small divan covered with blue and
gray cretonne stood in one corner
THE sILK-WORM.
The insect is in one sense q tiny man
ufacturer himself, finding his "raw ma
terial" chiefly in the leaf of the null
berry-tree (n,OrnS), which gives name
to the common silk-moth (BonlLyr
naorO, the caterpillar of which is the
silk-worm. The tree is said by pro-
verb to be made for the worm and the
worm for the tree, peculiarly suitable
for textile use, some of the Pacific is
landers making clothing by macerating
the bark of the paper mulberry, with
out the Intervention of the silk-worm.
Most of the silk of commerce is made
by this one moth from this one food, yet
it can feed, in whole or in part, upon
other leaves, as those of the Usage Or
ange in this country, and it has score
Of cousins or moro distant relations,
as the Tussah moth (AntheriG Cdphta)
of India, which live upon other trees,
and produce O similar material.
The moth is about an inch long,
whitish, with brown stripes, and lays
at the close of summer numerous eggs
about the size of pinhead, attached
singly to the leaf by kind of gum,
which, when dry, has silky appear
ancc. The moths soon die; the eggs
do not hatch until the next summer,
and can meanwhile be sent around the
world. The sale of "grain," or "seed,"
as the eggs are also called, is of itself
business, for it brings as much as
four dollars an ounce, tenfold the price
years ago, before an epidemic swept
through the silk world. Each moth
lays from 400 to 700 eggs, but it takes
tanning eggs for breeding, the grower
usually places the moths on cloths in
dark, warm room, where they con-
tentedly lay their eggs and die. In
tropical countries, as southern China
and India, the eggs hatch by natural
heat; in others artificial warmth is
necessary; and in old times hot-beds
were used, or the eggs were carried
about by women in little bags in their
bosoms. The careful grower makes
ready for the patching by providing
latticed trays or bundles of twigs,
about which the food. of finely chop
ped mulberry leaves, is distributed.
The tiny worm at first eats two meals
a day; at the end of five days he casts
his first skin, and the ninth day his Sec
ond; again, on the fifteenth, twenty
second, and thirty-second days he
''moults," becoming torpid, and ex-
changing old skins for new. Like his
fellow-worm, man, he has 'soven
ages; the sixth, when he has attained
the mature age of thirty-two days, is
the spinning, the last the breeding,
period. At the approach of the spin
ming age the worms from single ounce
of eggs (nearly 10000 eggs) will have
required over 1920 pounds of leaves,
and will need about 1874 square feet of
space for their homes. Each days
Matching Is kept together, lest the old
er eat up the food Of the weaker brcth-
rem, and every care must be taken to
prevent the growth of the minute fun
gus which makes "silk-worm rot"
and to ward of other diseases. In 1857
Europe was swept OF much of its silk
en- wealth by ono OF these parasitic dis
eases, and one OF Pasteur's early tri-
umphs was in discovering its nature.
The worm is conservative, and never
attempts to move from his place until
1t is time to begin spinning; he then
becomes distcnded with the silk juice,
and semi-transparent, like a ripe yell
low plum, and can presently be OBJ
served lifting his head and looking
about for u good site for his cocoon
building, which has been furnished by
the cocoon-grower in arches of twigs
or latticc-work. Some OF the worms
are lazy, and the twig has to be APP
piled. The spinner with careful fore
cast adjusts his body in the best posi-
ton for the cocoon, and commences to
throw tho floss that forms its outer
coating. The material of the silk is
gummy secretion in the sericteria, two
large glands along each side OF the
body. terminating each in spianeret
in the mouth; each fibre of the thread
proves on microscopic examination to
be double, one strand coming from
each spinncret. What the angler prizes
as "silk-worm gut" is this sericterinm
soaked in vinegar, stretched, and dried
in the sun. The worm clothes him
self tighter and tighter. the interior
thread being tho finer; he fixes his body
In place with his hooked feet, and
throws his head here and there rs he