The Opelousas courier., 1885-12-19
THE SILKWORM AT WORK.
Spinning a Thread Eighteen
Hundred Feet Long.
How the Silk of Commerce is Produced
by the Little Insect

manufactures himself, finding hi;
straw material chiefly in the leaf o.
the mulberry tree, which gives name
to the common silk-moth, the caterpil
lar of which is the silk worm. The
tree is said by a proyerb to be made
for the worm and the worm for the
tree, and it seems to have a fiber pecu-
liarly suitable for textile use, some OF
the Pacific islanders making clothing
by macerating the bark of the paper
mulberry, without the Intervention of
the silk worm. Most of the silk of
commerce is made by this one moth
from this n food, yet it can feed in
whole or in part, upon other leaves, as
those of the Usage orange in this coun-
try, anu it has a score of cousins or
distant relations, as the Tussah moth
OF India, which live upon other trees,
and produce a 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 a pin-head, attached
singly to the leaf by a kind of gum,
which, when dry. has a silky appear
ance. The moths soon die; the eggs do
not hatch until the next summer, and
a meanwhile be sent around the
world. The sale of grain or seed, as
the eggs are also called. is of itself Il
business, for 1t brings as much as 81
per ounce, ten-fold the price years ago,
before an epidemic swept through the
silk world. Each moth lays from four
hundred to seven hundred eggs, but it
takes over six hundred thousand to
make a pound. In obtaining eggs for
breeding, the grower usually places
the moths on cloths in adark. warm
room, where they contentedly lay their
eggs and die. In tropical countries,
as Southern China and India, the eggs
hatch by natural heat; in other, artif-
cial warmth is necessary; and in old
times hot-beds were used, OF the eggs
were carried about by women in little
bags in their bosoms. The careful
grower makes ready for the Matching
by providing latticed trays or bundles
of tWigs, about which the food Of I'm
ely eaopped mulberry leaves is distrib-
ute The tiny worm at first eats two
mel IS a day; at the end of five days he
cas- his first skin, on the ninth day his
secSnd; 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 'seven
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
spinning age the worms from a single
unc of eggs (nearly 10000 eggs)
will have required over 1900 pounds
of leaves. and will need about 1874
square feet space for their homes.
Each days Matching is kept togeth-
er, lest the older eat up the food of the
weaker %bretheren, and every eare must
be taken to prevent the growth of the
minute fungus which makes silk
worm rot" and to ward off other dis
eases. In 1857 Europe was
swept of much of it's silken
wealth by one of these para
site diseases, and one Of Pasteurs
early triumphs was in discovering its
The worm is conservative, and nev-
er attempts to move from his place
until II is time to begin spinning; he
becomes distended with the silk
juice and semi-transparent, like a ripe
plum, and can presently be OBJ
served lifting his head and looking
about for a good site for his cocoon
building, which has been furnished by
The cocoon-grower in arches of twigs
On lattice-work. Some of the worms
are lazy, and the tWig has to be APP
piled. The Spinner, with careful fore
east, adjusts his body in the best posi-
lion for the cocoon, and commences to
throw the floss that forms its outer
/
The material of the silk is q gummy
secretion in sericteria, two large glands
llong each side of the body, terminal
ng each in a spinneret in the mouth;
ZACH fiber Of the thread proves on mi
;roscopic examination to be double,
me stand coming from each spinneret.
What the angler prizes as silk worm
yut0 is this serictereium soaked in
7inegar, stretched and dried in thesun.
The worm closes himself In tighter
md tighter, the interior thread being
he finer; he fixes his body in place ,
With his hooked feet, and throws his
lead here and there as he spins. .
The thread is sometimes 1900 feet !,
ong without break; good cocoons I
hould yield 300 yards; it takes at last !
500 wormq IN raise a y,ound nf dk1L