90 REELING AND MANUFACTURING SILK. 



easily discouraged ; perseverance and attention for a short season 

 will enable them to become expert at tlie business, although 

 the result of their first efforts may seem discouraging. 



In European establishments, an extensive apparatus is used in 

 reeling silk, but we in America are not obliged to follow their 

 methods. The ingenuity of our countrymen will soon arrange a 

 reeling apparatus by the family fireside, and that part of the 

 year which cannot be employed in rearing the worms, may be in 

 part devoted to reeling the cocoons to any pattern or degree of 

 fineness. There is no more difficulty in it than there is in the 

 manufacture of straw and many other articles, which now em- 

 ploys great numbers of our industrious females. In light manu- 

 factures, what others have done well, our ladies can do as well 

 or better. 



In preparing to reel the silk, the first thing to be done, is to 

 sort the cocoons. The French make nine or ten qualities. 

 " Before the cocoons are reeled, it is necessary to free them from 

 that loose, fuzzy silk, which is on their outside, and is called floss ; 

 It being of so fine and loose a consistence, and partly broken by 

 taking it from the branches, or frames, where the worms had 

 spun them, that it cannot be reeled off. It may be taken off by 

 opening it on one of the ends of the cocoons, and then thrusting 

 out the hard part of them, clearing off, at the same time, the 

 loose silk adhering close to them, and mixing this part with the 

 floss, to make ordinary cheap silk. Then sort the cocoons 

 according to their different degrees of hardness. If the strong, 

 the tender, and the double ones are mixed, the trouble is not 

 only greatly increased, but. In reeling, the threads frequently 

 break, and the value of the silk is thereby lessened. For the 

 proof of this, let us suppose only two cocoons, one compact and 

 hard, and the other of a loose and soft substance, thrown togeth- 

 er into the hot water, in order to be reeled off together, and to 

 make one thread. If, now, the water be sufficiently hot to let 

 the hardest of the two cocoons wind off with ease, by dissolving 

 its gumminess, then that water will be too hot for the other, the 

 substance of which is loose, so that it will run off in burrs ; that is, 

 flakes of the silk will come off without being drawn to their ex- 



