XI
SILKWORMS AND THEIR WORK
About silk there is something particularly agreeable. There are few people who do not like the sheen of a soft silk, the sparkle of light on a "taffeta," and the richness of the silk that "can stand alone." Its delicate rustle is charming, and the "feel" of it is a delight. It has not the chill of linen, the deadness of cotton, or the "scratchiness" of woolen. It pleases the eye, the ear, and the touch.
The caterpillars of a few butterflies and of many moths are spinners of fibers similar to silk. Among these last is the beautiful pale-green lunar moth. Spiders spin a lustrous fiber, and it is said that a lover of spiders succeeded, by a good deal of petting and attention, in getting considerable material from a company of them. Silkworms, however, are the only providers of real silk for the world. Once in a while glowing accounts are published of the ease with which they can be raised and the amount of money which can be made from them with very small capital. This business, however, like all other kinds of business, requires close attention and skill if it is to be a success. An expert has said that it needs more time to build a spool of silk than a locomotive.
The way to begin to raise silkworms is first of all to provide something for them to eat. They are very
particular about their bill of fare. The leaf of the osage orange will answer, but they like much better the leaf of the white mulberry. Then send to a reliable dealer for a quarter of an ounce of silkworm eggs. That sounds like a small order, but it will bring you nine or ten thousand eggs, ready to become sturdy little silkworms if all goes well with them. Put them on a table with a top of wire netting covered with brown paper, and keep them comfortably warm. In a week or two, there will appear some little worms about an eighth of an inch long and covered with black hairs. These tiny worms have to become three inches or more in length, and they are expected to accomplish the feat in about a month. If a boy four feet tall should grow at the silkworm's rate for one month, he would become forty-eight feet tall. It is no wonder that the worms have to make a business of eating, or that the keeper has to make a business of providing them with food. They eat most of the time, and they make a queer little crackling sound while they are about it. They have from four to eight meals a day of mulberry leaves. The worms from a quarter of an ounce of eggs begin with one pound a day, and work up to between forty and fifty. Silkworms like plenty of fresh air, and if they are to thrive, their table must be kept clean. A good way to manage this is to put over them paper full of holes large enough for them to climb through. Lay the leaves upon the paper; the worms will come up through the holes to eat, and the litter on their table can be cleared away. As
the worms grow larger, the holes must be made larger. It is no wonder that their skins soon become too tight for them. They actually lose their appetite for a day or two, and they slip away to some quiet corner under the leaves, and plainly wish there were no other worms to bother them. Soon the skin comes off, and they make up for lost time so energetically that they have to drop their tight skins three times more before they are fully grown. Wet mulberry leaves must not be given them, or they will become sick and die, and there will be an end of the silkworm business from that quarter-ounce of eggs. They must have plenty of room on their table as well as in their skins. At first a tray or table two feet long and a little more than one foot wide will be large enough; but when they are full-grown, they will need about eighty square feet of table or shelves. At spinning time, even this will not be enough.
After the worms have shed their skins four times and then eaten as much as they possibly can for eight or ten days, they begin to feel as if they had had enough. They now eat very little and really become smaller. They are restless and wander about. Now and then they throw out threads of silk as fine as a spider's web. They know exactly what they want; each little worm wants to make a cocoon, and all they ask of you is to give them the right sort of place to make it in. When they live out of doors in freedom, they fasten their cocoons to twigs; and if you wish to give them what they like best, get plenty of dry twigs and weave them together in arches standing
over the shelves. Pretty soon you will see one worm after another climb up the twigs and select a place for its cocoon. Before long it throws out threads from its spinneret, a tiny opening near the mouth, and makes a kind of net to support the cocoon which it is about to weave.