Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/165

 attract these rapacious insects in large numbers, when they are destroyed with fire; a process which needs to be repeated several times. The ground under the trees is also well cleared, to render it easy to pick up and replace the worms which fall down. They are prevented from coming to the ground, by tying fresh plantain-leaves round the trunk, over whose slippery surface they cannot crawl; and then transferred from exhausted trees to fresh ones, on bamboo platters tied to long poles. The worms require to be constantly watched and protected from the depredations of both day and night birds, as well as rats and other vermin. During their moultings, they remain on the branches; but when about beginning to spin, they come down the trunk, and being stopped by the plantain-leaves, are there collected in baskets, which are afterwards put under bunches of dry leaves, suspended from the roof, into which the worms crawl, and form their cocoons—several being clustered together: this accident, owing to the practice of crowding the worms, which is most injudicious, rendering it impossible to wind off their silk in continuous threads, as in the filatures of Italy, France, and even Bengal. The silk is, therefore, spun like flax, instead of being unwound in single filaments. After four days the proper cocoons are selected for the next breed, and the rest are reeled. The total duration of a breed varies from sixty to seventy days; divided into the following periods:

Four moultings, with one day's illness attending each,  20 From fourth moulting to beginning of cocoon,            10 In the cocoon 20, as a moth 6, hatching of eggs 10,     36 —                                                        66

"On being tapped with the finger, the body renders a hollow sound; the quality of which shows whether they have come down for want of leaves on the tree, or from their having ceased feeding.

"As the chrysalis is not soon killed by exposure to the sun, the cocoons are put on stages, covered with leaves, and exposed to the hot air from grass burned under them; they are next boiled for about an hour in a solution of the potash, made from