58 CURIOSITIES OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



chrysalis form. These natural changes are gone through 

 much quicker in the spring than in the autumn season, a 

 difference of five or six weeks existing. In each season, as 

 fast as the caterpillars consume the leaves of one oak bush 

 they are removed by the attendant silk cultivator to another, 

 the youngest bushes being first used." 



Mr. Meadows, the English Consul at Newchang, says : 

 " Just before spinning its cocoon, it is a bright green-bodied 

 grub or caterpillar, of about 83 to 4 inches in length, with a 

 light brown head. On its pale brown face there are six or 

 eight small black specks. Its body has twelve joints. When 

 the worm begins to make its cocoon, it selects two or more 

 oak leaves, more or less facing each other, and lower than the 

 twig from which they proceed. These leaves it joins together 

 by a network of its silk thread, which thread keeps issuing 

 from its mouth as it moves its head from one leaf to the other. 

 It holds on, in the meantime, by its back claws to the twig. 

 When the leaves are sufficiently joined to form a sort of cup 

 or basket under the twig to which it is holding, it loosens its 

 hold, and drops into the receptacle it has thus formed. The 

 hindermost seven joints of the body are then with the tail 

 joints slightly curled in, drawn together, and, remaining in a 

 state of total inaction, serve, I presume, merely as a store from 

 which the silk thread matter is drawn. The work of further 

 self-enclosure the animal does with his head, and the foremost 

 five joints of the body. It first quite surrounds itself with the 

 loose flossy-like silk which forms the outer portion of the 

 cocoons as they come to market, and through which its green 

 body remains for a time visible. It then gradually forms 

 the dense, hardish, skin-like substance which constitutes the 

 inner portion of the cocoon. On opening a cocoon which had 

 been recently formed, and was to outward appearance quite 

 finished, I found inside a complete green worm curled up in 

 the way I have described as to its hind part, and with the 

 fore part in the condition in which it is when the animal is in 

 one of its sleeps on the bush. After a while the fore part 

 began to move, and the animal to spin silk, which it attached 

 at each turn of its head to the surface of a table on which I 



