TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 2l7 



Under normal circumstances, as soon as the mulberry bushes 

 show signs of budding, the silkworms' eggs required to be hatched 

 are placed in the magnanerie or nursery, where a commenciDg 

 temperature of 60° Fahr. is maintained, but is gradually raised 

 during the following nine days to 80°. About the tenth day the 

 worms appear, and are immediately supplied with the youngest 

 leaves cut into shreds, so that numerous raw edges may be pre- 

 sented to their appetites. A drop in the temperature of 5° is 

 now recommended, the range being afterwards kept between 70 

 and 75°. The strictest cleanliness must be observed both inside 

 and outside the magnanerie, as well as in the persons of the at- 

 tendants, and the worms require to be fed every six hours through- 

 out the twenty-four with freshly chopped leaves. Noises and 

 smells should equally be suppressed, and the worms should not 

 on any account be touched with the bare fingers. At the end 

 of this period the consumption of food for every ounce of eggs 

 hatched will have been from 7 to 15 lbs., when the worms pause 

 for twenty -four hours, apparently because gorged into insensi- 

 bility, but really in order to throw off skins which have become 

 too small for their augmenting corpulence. This suspension of 

 functions is known as tbe first sickness. 



On the old integument being fairly sloughed, the worms are 

 tenderly removed to clean trays of more ample dimensions, and 

 fed as before on food not so finely shred for about four days, 

 when the quantity devoured will probably have been from 20 to 

 30 lbs. Again the little creatures apparently feel the discomforts 

 of gluttony, and once more, during their second sickness, their 

 skins are abandoned. The endurance of the third period is 

 usually about a week ; and on the eleventh day or so from incu- 

 bation, a third sickness overtakes them after having eaten from 

 60 to 80 lbs. of leaves, when their skins are cast anew. Another 

 moulting occurs about the seventeenth day, and from this time 

 onward the capacity for food shown by the rapidly growing 

 worms is simply amazing. According to one Chinese author, each 

 healthy worm now devours about ten times its own weight of 

 leaves per day, so that the utmost vigilance and promptitude are 

 required on tlie part of the attendants in maintaining conditions 

 of purity, both for their own comfort and the health of their 

 interesting charge. The fourth period is usually completed by 

 the twenty-second day, when the worms will probably have com- 

 sumed from 120 lbs. to 160 lbs. of leaves. During the fifth 

 period, whicli lasts about ten days, the worms will likely have 

 consumed from 1100 to 1200 lbs. of leaves, after which a feeling 

 of restlessness takes possession of the little revellers, and they 

 begin to move off in various directions in search of convenient 

 spinning corners, which ought to be in readiness in the form of 

 miniature hed'^es of common broom, about eighteen inches high, 



