Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/198

 equal one thread of the silk-worm, and as it is impossible that these should be applied so accurately over each other as not to leave little vacant spaces between them, the light is not equally reflected, and the lustre of the material is consequently inferior to that in which a solid thread is used.

3. A great disadvantage of the spider's silk is, that it cannot be wound off the ball like that of the silk-worm, but must necessarily be carded. By this latter process, its evenness, which contributes so materially to its lustre, is destroyed.

The ferociousness and pugnacity of the spiders are not exaggerated; they fight like furies. Their voracity, too, is almost incredible, and it is very questionable whether the mere collection of flies sufficient to feed a large number of the spiders would not involve an amount of expense fatal to the project as a lucrative undertaking. The strength of the spiders' filament is, if anything, overstated by Reaumur. Deficiency of lustre arising from the carding of the filaments is common to the spider-fabric and to spun silk; this objection would, perhaps, not be of very great weight but for the decisive calculation by which Reaumur showed the comparative amount of production between the spider and the silk-worm.

The largest cocoons weigh four, and the smaller three grains each; spider-bags do not weigh above one grain each; and, after being cleared of their dust, have lost two-thirds of this weight; therefore the work of twelve spiders equals that of only one silk-worm; and a pound of spider-silk would require for its production 27,648 insects. But as the bags are wholly the work of the females, who spin them as a deposit for their eggs, it follows that 55,296 spiders must be reared to yield one pound of silk: yet this will be obtained only from the best spiders; those large ones ordinarily seen in gardens, &c., yielding not more than a twelfth part of the silk of the others. The work of 280 of these would therefore not yield more silk than the produce of one industrious silk-worm, and 663,552 of them would furnish only one pound of silk!

Although Reaumur's report completely extinguished Mr. Bon's project in France, it was revived in England two or three times in the early part of the last century. Swift has