SOUTHERN HORIZONS 



mulberry trees at the mercy of birds and storms. They 

 are parked in shallow trays and one of the first modern 

 conveniences that the Syrian women adopted was the 

 regular American window screen with a two-inch strip 

 tacked around the edges so they can be stacked one 

 above the other. In these shallow trays the silkworms 

 gorge on fresh mulberry leaves for twenty-six days. 

 They need to, for in that brief time they grow to eight 

 thousand times their original size besides storing up 

 material to spin a silk filament from one to two thousand 

 feet long. This filament they weave round themselves in 

 an oval cocoon, some white, some pale yellow, a little 

 over an inch long, from which the sleeping chrysalis 

 emerges as a moth. The female moths lay three to five 

 hundred eggs that hatch out in ten days at a temperature 

 of seventy-eight degrees. Then the cycle starts all over 

 again. 



The moths bite their way out of the cocoons and to 

 prevent this cutting of the fibers, the chrysalis is killed. 

 The old way was to steam the cocoons, but another up- 

 to-date convenience is to freeze them in the electric 

 refrigerator, saving a lot of fuss and muss. Once the 

 chrysalis is dead, the cocoons can be kept a long time. 

 Like any other industrial raw material, they can be 

 shipped half way 'round the world, if handled with 

 reasonable care. 



To prepare the silk for spinning, the cocoons are 

 soaked in hot water to soften their natural gum; the 



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