THE SILKWORM ITS REARING AND MANAGEMENT. 55 



their juvenile capacities, a fortunate thing for them, for it would 

 be as unsuitable to offer them the hard, rough, full-grown leaves 

 as to feed a baby on beef. 



But now a difficulty arises. Here is a set of crawling mites 

 perhaps some hundreds or even thousands in number, scarcely more 

 than one-twelfth of an inch long, amongst a lot of unhatched eggs. 

 How are they to be fed in such a way as not to interfere with the 

 hatching of the rest ? They are of course much too small to be 

 picked up by the fingers, and if one were to attempt this, the 

 only result would be that they would be crushed to death. In 

 fact, even when they grow larger, they should not be touched with 

 the hand any more than can possibly be helped. All such 

 unwarrantable interference with their persons is likely to damage 

 them in one way or other and hinder their proper development 

 into a moth. Young people who keep caterpillars of any kind are 

 far too ready to nurse and pull them about, and in moving them 

 from one place to another, to seize them with no very gentle grip 

 between finger and thumb. But any one who thinks at all about 

 the matter, and remembers what was said in the last chapter about 

 the internal organization of the caterpillar, will see at once that 

 such treatment is all too likely to produce internal bruises or 

 other damage that may prove disastrous or even fatal. And 

 apparently young people are not the only ones who sin in this 

 respect, for the Chinese, in their enormously extensive silkworm 

 literature, have numberless warnings on this very point, and some 

 of their peasantry must, at one time or other, have been most care- 

 less in the performance of their duties, or we should hardly read 

 such words as these : " Silkworms are very tender things, and 

 cannot bear being rubbed or pushed ; while they are young, people 

 know that they must deal gently with them ; but when large, in 

 separating them or removing their excrements, people sometimes 

 lazily roll them about without any regard ; or leave them for a 

 long time huddled up in confusion, or pitch them high and throw 

 them far, from which causes much injury and sickness arise." 



Amateurs in this country usually employ a camel's hair brush 

 to pick them up with. This, if one does not grudge the enor- 

 mous expenditure of time it involves where the numbers are 

 large, answers pretty well when they are quite young ; but it is 

 not always easy to drop the little caterpillar when once he is on 

 the brush, without working and twisting the latter about a good deal 

 -a process which can hardly be beneficial to the entangled grub. 

 When the caterpillar is fully grown, such a method is inapplicable, 

 and the brush can only be used to give the creatures pokes and 

 pushes till they roll off into the desired place. 



