How Silk is Made

Hokitika Guardian, 18 June 1921, Page 2

How Silk is Made

Do you realise each morning when

you fasten your silk tie that one thousand silk worms have died to produce it P Ilmt your silk blouse may have meant the death of twenty thousand? Yet that is so.

The silk industry started in China over 4,000 years ago, and since then it lias spread to India and Japan, and at a later date to France and Southern Europe. Silk cultivators exercise the greatest care in selecting their stock. Disease among silkworms spreads rapidly, and so most European breeders obtain their eggs from China and Japan. The eggs are yellow and resemble turnip seeds, They are placed in incubators kept considerably below blood heat, and at the end of 30 days the silkworms are hatched.

The silkworms are removed to wickerwork shelves and there fed with freshly dried cut-up mulberry leaves. The silkworm is most voracious and in its short life of 30 days eats over an ounce of leaves.

A silkworm sheds its skin lour times, and finally is 3* in long and weighs l-fith of an ounce. It is white and spotted with brown, and its legs have the colour of the silk whiclv it will spin.

After the fourth moult the worn

climbs upon a twig and there encloses itself within a cocoon. This is ljin long and Jin across and takes three, lays to spin.

The cocoon, consists of a continuous double silk fibre about 4,000 yards long which is discharged from two glands underneath the silkworm’s mouth. Cocoons which will yield female moths are oval in shape. Rod-like cocoons yield males.

For breeding purposes the best cocoons are selected and placed in a. warm room. After two week's the dirty white moth which has developed within moistens one end of the cocoon with saliva, forces the silk threads apart, and creeps out.

The moths immediately begin to pair. Each female lays about 400 eggs and then dies. The eggs are collected, examined for signs of disease, and then stored for future breeding. The remaining cocoons are steamed so as to kill all life within and are steeped in hot water. This softens various gelatinous matters and enables the silk thread to be reeled in a form suitable for making fabrics. Silkworms are allowed to live solely because of the sillc they produce. They are slaves for fashion.