1 78 ECONOMIC ZOOLOGY AND ENTOMOLOGY 



cocoon from injury by the moth, so he kills his thousands of 

 pupae by dropping the cocoons into boiling water or by 

 putting them into a hot oven. Then, after cleaning away 

 the loose fluffy silk of the outside, he finds the beginning of 

 the long thread which makes the cocoon, and with a clever 

 little reeling machine he unwinds, unbroken, its hundreds of 



FIG. 84. The luna-moth, or pale empress of the night, Tropcea lima. 



(About f natural size.) 



feet of merchantable silk floss. Or the cocoons are taken to a 

 central establishment where the pupae are killed and the silk 

 wound and made into large skeins ready to go to the cloth- 

 making mills. 



The order Lepidoptera is divided into three principal sub- 

 orders, namely, the Rhopalocera, or butterflies, which are day 



