352 Or tHe SILK-WORM. 
and the like, for which reafon you muft avoid offending: 
their delicate organs. 
‘In many parts of Italy, amongft others Romagna and. 
La Marche of Ancona, they have two filk racoltas, or har-- 
vets. ‘They keep the eggs in very cool places, and when: 
the mulberry tree begins to bud again (for during the ra=- 
colta it is {tripped of its leaves for food for the worms) 
they expofe their eggs to hatch. Sometimes they give 
rofe leaves to the young worms, when there are no young, 
mulberry leaves. ‘The cocons of this fecond racolta are: 
rather inferior to thofe of the firft. The filk worm is ge-- 
nerally fourteen lines in length and two in diameter and 
fix and two-fevenths in circumference. He is either of. 
a milk or pearl colour or blackifh: thefe laft are the beft.. 
His body is divided into feven rings, to each of which are: 
joined two very fhort feet. He has a fmall point like a. 
thorn, exactly above the anus. The fubftance which. 
forms the filk, is in their ftomach, which is very long; 
wound up as it were on two fpindles and furrounded 
with a gum, commonly yellow, fometimes white, not often. 
greenifh, When the worm {pins his cocon, he winds off 
a thread from each of his f{pindles, and joins them, after=- 
wards, by means of two hooks whfch. are placed in his: 
mouth; fo that the cocon is compofed of a double thread.. 
Having opened a filk worm. you may take out the {pins- 
dies which are folded up in three plaits, and on ftretching 
them out and drawing each extremity, you.may extend 
them to near two ells in length. If you then fcrape the 
thread fo ftretched out with your nail, you will fcratch off 
the gum, which is very much like bees-wax, and performs 
the fame office to the filk it covers, as a gold leaf does to the 
ingot of filver it furrounds, when drawn out by the wire- 
drawer; the filk then remains of a pearl colour. This 
thread which is extremely {trong and even is about the: 
thicknefs of a middling pin. 
Three things very remarkable in this infect, are, 
1. They 
