INSTRUMENTS OF THE INSECT: AND ITS CHEMICAL ENERGIES, AS IN THE COCHINEAL AND THE CANTHARIDES.
Have I insisted too much upon my theme? No; I have reached its very depths, its most important details.
Silk is not a particular, but a general view or aspect of it, for nearly every insect produces silk.
Hitherto we have dealt with only one kind of silk,—that of the bombyx, and indeed that of a species of bombyx which is not very fertile. Let us hope that the meritorious Society of Acclimatization will introduce here the Chinese bombyx (Attacus), which lives on the dwarf oak, whose strong and cheap silk might be used as clothing for the poor. All classes thenceforth might wear a material warm, light, impervious, solid; and not only so, but beautiful, brilliant, and noble. Such a change would be equivalent, in my eyes, to the general ennoblement and transfiguration of the people.
Réaumur long ago asserted that numerous chrysalides would furnish a beautiful silk. The spider would yield a substance both delicate and tenacious,—as witness the admirable veil of spider's silk preserved in the Paris Museum.
The delicate Arachne, whose light thread resembles a fleecy cloud,—which is nevertheless so strong, as it issues from the spinnerets,—Arachne is pre-eminently the spinner. But, as a general rule, the insect is the weaver, and wholly devoted to that feminine art. I was about to say, the insect is a woman.