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know what the person's idea was who first tried to unravel the textile thread from a silkworm's 

 cocoon did he or she ever contemplate the now universal use of the substance then engaged 

 with? There used to be an old saying which was that "patience and perseverance turned 

 mulberry leaves into satin." Although the substance of the satin is natural, the fabric can hardly be 

 considered a specimen of natural history. Though the mulberry leaves may be turned into 

 satin, we have the impossibility pointed out to us also of "making a silken purse out of a sow's 

 ear," and how true is this saying. 



Now in addition to the direct utility to man in giving him the silk, how great an 

 indirect advantage might also be taken were we to pay more attention than has yet been paid to 

 the combinations of colours and the variety of patterns (Nature's own), and of which can any be 

 more correct than these which are so freely offered for us to copy? Consider the edgings of the 

 wings of these insects, and see how advantageously the patterns of many of them might be 

 made useful in embroidery what a yet undeveloped field there is for such work. Nature's 

 works are not nearly so much considered as they ought to be. We have divine orders to study 

 them, and if we are so too much taken up with other matters to notice them, it shows there 

 is something wrong, and besides this it is a fault as well as a misfortune generally, that we are 

 not all encouraged to take more interest in them. 



It has often struck me as extraordinary the different forms each kind of insect appears in, 

 as the caterpillar, the cocoon, and the fully developed moth or butterfly: First the caterpillar, 

 as hatched from the egg, a voracious creature with large jaws, and during this state it appears 

 to eat as much food as almost seems requisite to sustain it so long as it lives. Of course in 



