HOW SILK IS MADE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2315, 13 August 1921, Page 4

HOW SILK IS MADE.

Do you realise each morning when you fasten your silk tie that one thousand silkworms have died to produce it? That your silk blouse may have meant the death of twenty thousand 1 ? Yet that is so. The silk industry started in China over 4,000 years ago, and since then it has 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 amongst silkworms spreads rapidly, and so most European breeds obtain their eggs from China and Japan.

The eggs are yellow, and resemble turnip seeds. They are placed in incubators kept considerably below blood beat, and at the end of thirty 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 thirty days eats over an ounce of leaves. A silkworm sheds its skin four times, and finally is 3Ain. long, and weighs l-oth of an ounce. It is white and spotted with brown, and its legs have the colour of the silk which it will spin. After the fourth moult the worm climbs upon a twig, and there encloses itself within it-cocoon. This is ljiu. long and :]in, acres-, and takes three days to spin. The cocoon consists of a continuous double silk fibre about 4,000 yards long, which is discharged front two glands underneath the silkworm’s mouth. Cocoons which yield female moths are oval in shape. Rod-like cocoon- yield males.

For breeding purposes the best cocoons arc selected and placed in a warm room. After two weeks the 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 silk which they produce. They are slaves of fashion.