LEPIDOPTERA. 



237 



L_ 



baker's oven, heated for baking bread. But they ran the risk thus of 

 being burnt, or of a certain number of chrysalides remaining alive. 

 Now, to kill the chrysalides, they make use of steam at 100, 

 produced by water boiling in a 

 vessel, and which passes through 

 wicker baskets filled with cocoons. 



The rearer must also take care 

 at the time he gathers them, to 

 separate the cocoons which are to 

 provide eggs for the next year. As 

 the female cocoons are heavier 

 than the male cocoons, they are 

 easily separated by weighing them 

 in a pair of scales. 



To obtain the eggs, or grain, 

 the cocoons are fixed on sheets of 

 brown paper, covered with a slight 

 coating of paste made of flour. 

 They are arranged in such a man- 

 ner that the moths shall find no 

 obstacle when they come out of 

 them, head foremost; and, more- 

 over, so that they may be able to 

 reach with their legs the cocoon 

 which is opposite them, so as to 

 hang on to it, and to facilitate i 

 their exit from their own cocoon 1 

 (Fig. 218). The male and female p . 

 cocoons are pasted on separate '' 

 sheets. 



It is from fifteen to twenty days after the montee, or mounting, and 

 when the temperature of the rooms has been kept between 20 and 

 25, that the moths begin to be hatched. As they appear, they are 

 seized by the wings and placed on cloths stretched out for the 

 purpose, where they are left for about an hour, till their wings have 

 fallen flat on their bodies. As soon as they have evacuated a red 

 liquor, the males and females, which up to that time have been 

 apart, are put together. 



They then stick sheets of paper on to screens, putting from 

 twenty-five to thirty females on each sheet (Fig. 219). It is here the 

 moths lay their eggs. The sheets of paper, covered with eggs, are 

 then hung on wires, at a small distance from the ceiling of a room 



ratus for stifling the chrysalide 

 in the .cocoons. 



