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While the reel is turning, the spinner must continually add fresh 

 librcs to each thread as fast as she can find the ends, not waiting till 

 some of the number she began with are ended, because the internal 

 fibres are much thinner than those constituting the external layers; but 

 must constanth'- prepare fresh ends, by dipping the whisk among fresh 

 cocoons, of which such a quantity must be occasionally thrown into 

 the basin, as will suflicc to supply the two threads wliich ai-e reeling, 

 but not more; because, by being too long soaked in the hot water, they 

 ■would wind off in burrs. The cocoons thrown in, must be often forced 

 under the water, that the)'- may be equally soaked: for, as they swim 

 wiih their greater part above water, that part would remain hard and 

 stubborn, while the part which is under water would be too much 

 soaked; or some hot water may be thrown upon them frequently with 

 a brush, and also on the cocoons which are reeling, when they grow 

 dry at top, and yield the fibres with difficulty. The supplying fresh 

 ends, when the cocoons are exhausted, or diminish, or the fibres break, 

 is performed by taking one end of a fibre, and throwing it lightly on 

 the one that is winding, and rolling them between the thumb and the 

 finger, or gently pressing them. 



As often, therefore, as the cocoons are partially wound, are exhaust- 

 ed, or the fibre bieaks, fresh ones must be joined, to keep up the num- 

 ber requisite, or the proportion: thus three new ones may be wound, 

 and two half wound, or four new ones, and the silk will then be from 

 four to five cocoons. The adroitness in adding fresh threads can only 

 be acquired by practice. The difficulty of keeping the thread even is 

 so great, owing to the increased fineness of the fibre inside, that, (ex- 

 cepting a thread of two cocoons,) we do not say a silk of three, of 

 four, or of six cocoons, but a silk of three and four, of four and five, 

 and of six to seven. In coarser silk, we do not calculate so nicely, as 

 one cocoon more or less: we say, for example, from twelve to fifteen, 

 from fifteen to twenty cocoons. In beginning a thread of ten cocoons^ 

 from sixteen to twenty will sometimes be required to preserve a uni- 

 form thread, after a portion of the first layer has been wound off. 



The quantity of silk which can be reeled in any given time, is in pro- 

 portion to the quickness with which the spinner can add fresh cocoons. 

 Thus, if we suppose that every cocoon, at a medium, will either break 

 or be wound off at the end of five hundred feet, then, if five such pods 

 are reeled together, a fresh end will be wanted at every hundred feet 

 that are reeled; if ten are reeled together, one will be wanted at every 

 fifty feet; if sixteen together, then at thirty-one feet, and so on. The 

 seldomer that cocoons end or break, the greater number of them can 

 one spinner attend, which shows the advantage of sound cocoons, of an 

 expert manager, and of every artifice, which can hinder either the 

 breaking of the single fibres, or of the whole thread. 



When, in the progress of reeling off a set of cocoons, the fibre is ob- 

 served to diminish in size, in place of supplying additional fibres from 

 more numerous cocoons than were at first in play, in order to keep up 

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