THE SILKWORM ITS REARING AND MANAGEMENT. 53 



known to be useless. It is possible, however, to impart even to 

 dead or unfertile eggs the natural colour of good ones, by washing 

 them in a peculiar sort of wine, and this practice has sometimes 

 been resorted to by unprincipled dealers to palm off their old 

 and useless seed as good and fertile. 



The eggs are laid in August, and as it is of the utmost import- 

 ance that they should not produce caterpillars till their food 

 is ready for them, i.e., till the mulberry trees have begun to put 

 forth their leaves in the succeeding season, their hatching time 

 ought not to arrive till the following May. But too high a 

 temperature during the early months of the year might produce 

 a premature hatching, which would, of course, be the ruin of all 

 that thus come out. Therefore great pains are taken to shelter 

 the eggs from an excess of heat during the winter. They can 

 stand any amount of cold, and in travelling, are often without 

 damage packed in ice. They need also to be kept dry, or they 

 will become mouldy, and of course perish. A cold, dry cellar, 

 consequently, is about the best place for them during the winter. 

 But they must also be protected from rats, mice, insects, etc., any 

 of which creatures would soon make short work of them. Some- 

 times they are put in bags, and hung up to the ceiling in a dry, 

 cold room, in which position they are well out of the reach of 

 most of such depredators. They are also kept in tin boxes with 

 perforated sides. 



When the mulberry trees begin to show their leaves, prepara- 

 tions are made for hatching the eggs. If they have passed the 

 winter adhering to the sheets of cloth or paper, all that is 

 necessary is simply to spread these out on trays or in boxes in 

 a well-aired and warm room whose temperature averages about 

 75 F. If they are loose, they must not be placed in piles, but 

 uniformly sifted or spread out on pieces of paper or cloth, pre- 

 ferably the latter, as the young grubs then get a better foothold to 

 help them in working their way out of the eggshell. The tem- 

 perature should be kept as uniform as possible, and the heat 

 gradually increased about 2 per day, and then, in about a week, 

 the young caterpillars may be expected to begin to appear. 

 There should be good ventilation in the room, but the direct rays 

 of the sun must on no account be allowed to play upon the eggs, or 

 they will speedily be killed. Nor should the atmosphere be 

 too dry, or the eggshells will harden so much that the young 

 caterpillars will have difficulty in getting out of them. In large 

 establishments or magnaneries, as they are called, the floor is 

 occasionally sprinkled with water to produce the requisite degree 

 of moist are. Of course, when the numbers are small, these 



