180 TEXTILE FIBRES. 



The water in which the cocoons are placed must be very hot, otherwise 

 the insect changes into a moth. 



"The winding operations of silk are carried on in the following 

 manner : 



"A woman sits on a bar of a very simple oblong frame, just wide 

 enough to contain her legs and allow free movement. In the middle, 

 running parallel with the long side of the frame and equidistant from 

 each of the short sides, is a treadle about 2 feet long and 6 inches broad, 

 like a double pedal of a piano. Through the middle of this treadle runs 

 a stick about 3 feet high, and, as the woman plays with each foot upon 

 the two sides of the treadle one after the other, of course the stick wags 

 from side to side. To the top of the stick is affixed another stick about 

 half as long as the frame and running parallel with its long side. At the 

 other end of this last-named stick is fastened the outer end of a zigzag 

 piece of wood or an iron crank, the inner end of which fits into a wooden 

 roller about the size of a large bread roller. This roller is the axle-tree 

 of a six-spoked wheel about 2J feet in diameter. There is a double row 

 of spokes that is six running out of each end of the axle and each 

 spoke is connected with the one opposite to it by a stick, these six sticks 

 forming, so to speak, the felloe or tyre of the wheel. 



"So far, we see that the wheel is turned when tbe woman presses 

 the treadle. At the woman's right hand (the wheel being at her left) is 

 a small stove keeping almost on the boil a gallon or two of water in an 

 ordinary iron cooking pan, 2 feet in diameter. The frame is prolonged 

 so that one short side ends in a bar running over the middle of the pan, 

 and on this bar is set another frame (like a Bahl saw) having as its 

 middle part a small roller (usually divided off into two or three separated 

 portions) of bamboo slips. In the lower part of the small frame, on the 

 woman's side, are fixed two or three hooks, or two or three copper coins, 

 with suitable holes (accordingly as the rollers and wheel carry off two or 

 three skeins), and through these hooks or holes the woman inserts five 

 cocoon threads selected from a bundle of several dozen which she holds 

 in her other hand or keeps hanging to a counter-balancing chopstick. 

 The thread of five strands is thus brought through the hook or cash and 

 a few inches above. It is then brought over the roller and back on to 

 the circumference of the large wheel, which, when revolved, of course 

 turns the small rollers very rapidly, but, owing to their small size, with 

 very little jerk upon the cocoons, and the silk is wound on to the cir- 

 cumference of six felloe spokes of the wheel. Every second or so one or 

 more, or even all of the strands forming the skein thread break, but the 

 woman with great and almost invisible dexterity joins others on to those 

 remaining attached, which are themselves almost invisible. This joining 



