WILD SILK WORMS. 187 



branches, where their lodging and provisions would be too 

 near together. 



The four moultings > which take place at intervals of four 

 days, being finished and passed, the wild silk worms have 

 nearly all their growth, and are at least twice as large as 

 the silk worms of the mulberry tree. " It is a caterpillar of 

 the first class, according to the system of M. de Reaumur/' 

 says father D'Incarville ; " it is of a green color mixed with 

 white, not perfectly smooth, with six tubercles, six on each 

 ring. The hairs of these tubercles are covered with a kind 

 of white powder." After the eighteenth or nineteenth day, 

 the wild silk worms lose all appetite, and successively pass 

 from a sullen apathy, or half numbness, to uneasiness 

 and very lively agitation. They run here and there, as if 

 they feared making mistakes in the choice of a leaf they 

 are about selecting, and a place to spin their cocoon, and 

 await their revivification the next year. It is generally from 

 the nineteenth to the twenty-second day from their hatch- 

 ing that they commence this great work. Be it in order to 

 have wherewith to fasten the first threads of the tomb about 

 to be built be it to increase its thickness and solidity, it 

 curls up a leaf in the form of a gondola, and encloses it- 

 self under the tissue it spins, and which is finished by form- 

 ing a cocoon of the size of a hen's egg, and almost as hard. 

 This cocoon has one of its extremities open, in the form of 

 an inverted funnel ; it is a passage prepared for the butter- 

 fly's future egress. With the assistance of the liquid with 

 which it is moistened, and which it directs toward that 

 place, the moistened threads yield to its efforts: it breaks 

 through its prison when the time arrives. 



In collecting together all we have just said, it is evident 

 that the wild silk worms are easier to raise in many respects 

 than the silk worms of the mulberry tree, and, perhaps, 



