After a long and interesting description of the multiplied and ceaseless labours of the silk-grower in providing food for the armies of caterpillars and sheltering them from the elements, the writer proceeds as follows:—
"The peasant is unwilling to permit of our remaining and watching operations. Traditional superstition has inculcated in him a dread of the evil eye. If we stop and admire the wisdom displayed by the worm, it will, in his opinion, be productive of evil results; either the cocoon will be badly formed, or the silk will be worthless. So, first clearing the place of all intruders, he puts a huge padlock on the door, and, locking the khlook (room in which the silkworms are kept), deposits the key in his zinnar, or waistband.
"Next week he will come and take out the cocoons, and, separating them from the briars, choose out a sufficiency for breeding purposes, and all the rest are handed over to the women of his family. These first of all disentangle the cocoon from the rich and fibrous web with which it is enveloped, and which constitutes an article of trade by itself. The cocoons are then either reeled off by the peasant himself or else sold to some of the silk factories of the neighbourhood, where they are immediately reeled off, or are suffocated in an oven, and afterwards, being well aired and dried, piled up in the magazines of the factory.
"Such is a brief account or history of these cocoons, of which we were continually encountering horseload after horseload.
"As you will perceive, unless suffering from a severe cold in the head, the odour arising from these cocoons is not the most agreeable; but this arises partly from the neglect and want of care of the peasants themselves, who, reeling off basketful after basketful of cocoons, suffer the dead insects within to be thrown about and accumulate round the house, where they putrefy and emit noxious vapours."
The Hebrew word meshi, which is the one that occurs in Ezek. XVI., is derived from a root which signifies "to draw out," probably in allusion to the delicacy of the fibre.
Although our limits will not permit the cultivation of the Silkworm to be described more fully, it may here be added that all silk-growers are full of superstition regarding the welfare of the caterpillars, and imagine that they are so sensitive that they will die of fear. The noise of a thunderclap is, in their estimation, fatal to Silkworms; and the breeders were therefore accustomed to beat drums within the hearing of the Silkworms, increasing the loudness of the sound, and imitating as nearly as possible the crash and roll of thunder, so that the caterpillars might be familiar with the sound if the thunderstorm should happen to break near them.
A quaint use of this superstition is made by Luis of Grenada in one of his discourses:—
Dominica IV. post Pent., Concio 1.
"Sunt rursus alii, quorum pectora sic generis humani hostis obsedit, ut nullius divinæ vocis fulminibus perterreantur, vel parum animo commoveantur.