240 THE INSECT WORLD. 



Let US suppose that it is wished now to make up a brin, or staple, 

 by uniting together the ends of five cocoons. She chooses five ends 

 in the mass, makes of these a bundle, and introduces it into the hole 

 of ^.filiere. She makes two staples (brms) at once, one on her right, 

 the other on her left hand. She then brings them together, she 

 crosses them, rolls them, and twists them, the one on the other, 

 several times ; after which, she separates them from above and keeps 

 them, well apart, making each of them pass into a hook at a distance, 

 from which they are going to twist round into a hank, separately, on 

 a wheel. The two threads thus twisted are drawn close together, 

 compressed, and become one, getting round by rolling on each other, 

 and being kept in continual motion, drawn out as they are by the 

 rapid motion of the wheel. 



The difficulty which the emptying the cocoon of its silk thread 

 presents, makes us understand what difliculties those manufacturers 

 must have met with who have lately attempted to extract from the 

 stalks of mulberry leaves a sort of silk. We will enter into no 

 details of the attempts which have been made to accomplish this 

 object in our time, attempts which have, however, been crowned with 

 no success whatever. We will confine ourselves to reminding the 

 reader that these attempts are far from being of recent origination, 

 since they date back to as far as Olivier de Serres, the father of 

 French sericulture. 



In a little work pubhshed by Olivier de Serres, in 1603, under 

 the title of Ciieilkttc de hi Sole, '• The Gathering of Silk," we find a 

 memoir entitled : La second richesse dii umrier, qui se trouve en son 

 escorce^ pour en /aire des toiles de toute sorfe, non 7noins utile que la soit 

 provenant d'icclui, " The second wealth of the mulberry tree which i^ 

 found in its bark, how to make of it cloth of all sorts, not less usefu 

 than the silk derived from this tree." Olivier de Serres proves in this 

 memoir that the second bark, or liber, of the mulberry tree contain; 

 a fibre capable of replacing hemp or flax, and he describes th( 

 processes by which this may be obtained. The processes which hac 

 been proposed by Olivier de Serres in 1603, were resumed in th< 

 Cevennes a dozen years ago by M. Duponchel on the one hand 

 and on the other by M. Cabanis,'^ who operated on die bark instead 

 taking the whole of the wood of the mulberry tree. But none c 

 these attempts have given any good results up to the present moment 



The various diseases which for the last fifteen years have been s 

 fatal to the mulberry silkworm, have suggested the idea of acclimati; 



* See the " Annee scientifique," 70 annee, p. 432. 



