REARING SILKWORMS. 29 



ARRANGEMENTS FOR SPINNING. 



When the worms find in themselves that 

 they have extracted from their food and stored 

 away in- their gilk cells or ^ducts all the silk they 

 can retemxjjihey. begin to look for a place to spin. 

 Something in their nature prompts them to look 

 up, and if ,np proper place he provided, they will 

 even crawl up to the ceiling, and form their 

 cocoons by attaching them to the ceiling and the 

 wall. ^ 



A great many ways have been tried by those 

 who have from time to time engaged in the silk 

 business in this -country. Some have tried 

 branches laid transversely all over the trays, 

 mixing with the branches coarse straw, or excel- 

 sior, or paper torn in strips. Others put the 

 branches all round the trays where they are feed- 

 ing, and hope they will take to the branches when 

 they get ready to spin. Others make arches of 

 branches over the spinning-trays, and let the 

 worms mount up into the arches when they get 

 ready. This is a very good way, but very 

 troublesome, and calls for a constant renewal of 

 the branches, as they canno't very readily be* 

 cleaned* Others, again, make frames something 

 like the feeding-trays, only the frames are deeper, 



