358 Or tHe SILK-WORM. 
The building where you fpread your cocons is called 
the Coconiere, and confifts of one or more large rooms, in 
which are diftributed as many ranges as you can conve- 
niently place, taking care that the fupporters touch nei- 
ther the roof nor the wall, becaufe if there were any rats in 
the Coconiere they would come down the poles, and de- 
ftroy the cocons, they being very greedy of the worm con- 
tained in them. 
A middling cocon has about thirteen lines in its great- 
er diameter, by eight lines the lefler diameter, fome are 
larger, fome are {maller; but this is the general fize. 
The dupion has generally fifteen lines great diameter by 
nine lefler diameter. 
The cocon is compofed of feveral ftrata or furfaces ap- 
plied one on the other; notwithftanding they all commu- 
nicate, otherwife it would be impoflible to wind them off. 
It is an eafy matter to take off one or more of thefe fur- 
faces, the uppermoft of which is coarfer, lefs gummed, 
and higher coloured than the undermoft. Finally, thefe 
furfaces are compofed of a fine fort of faliva, whofe tex- 
ture has a tolerable refemblance to the thin fkin you find 
joined to the infide of a hen’s egg. 
The cocons produce a thread of a very unequal length, 
you may meet fome that yield twelve hundred ells, whilft 
others will fcarcely afford two hundred ells. In generab 
you may calculate the produétion of a cocon, from five 
hundred to fix hundred ells in length. 
IV. The worm or chryfalis, as he is inclofed in his co= 
con is fhrunk up into himfelf, fo that it is but half as~ 
long in his primitive ftate, but it is on the contrary as 
thick again. 
He is of a cinnamon colour, and full of liquor, rather 
clear, which forms the feed in the males, and the eggs 
in the females. Though he feems to be infenfible in 
that ftate, yet you may perceive he is not wholly fo, for 
on piercing him with a pin flightly, you will fee him 
move, 
