Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/158

 she is called Isan-mon, 'mother of the worms.' She takes possession of the chamber, but not before she has washed herself and put on clean clothes, which have not the least repulsive smell; she must not have eaten anything immediately before, or handled any wild succory, the smell of which is very prejudicial. She must be clothed in a plain habit, without any lining, that she may be more sensible of the warmth of the place, and accordingly increase or lessen the fire. She must also carefully avoid making a smoke or raising a dust, which would also be offensive."

Silk-worms require to be carefully humored before the time of casting their slough. Every day is to them a year, having in a manner, the four seasons; the morning being the Spring; the middle of the day: Summer; the evening: Autumn; and the night, Winter.

The chambers are so contrived as to admit of the use of artificial heat when necessary. Great care is taken of the sheets of paper on which the eggs have been laid; and the hatching is either retarded or advanced, by the application of cold or heat according to circumstances, so as to time the simultaneous exit of the young worms exactly to the period when the tender spring-leaves of the mulberry are most fit for their nourishment.

They proportion the food very exactly to the young worms by weighing the leaves, which in the first instance are cut, but as the insects become larger, are given to them whole. The greatest precautions being observed in regulating the temperature of the apartments. The worms are fed upon a species of small hurdles of basket-work, strewed with leaves, which are constantly shifted for the sake of cleanliness, the insects readily moving off to a fresh hurdle with new leaves, as the scent attracts them. In proportion to their growth, room is afforded to them by increasing the number of these hurdles, the worms of one being shifted to three, then to six, and so on until they attain their greatest size. When they have cast their several skins, reached their greatest size, and assumed a transparent yellowish color, they are removed to places divided into compartments, preparatory to casting forth their silken filaments.

In the course of a week after the commencement of this op