366 [AsSEMBL"? 



for some time. Nature has given it complicated organs. The 

 lower part of this worm, both front and rear, exhibits on each 

 side of its intestinal canal, a succession of tubes. The first of 

 which is called the slender tube (tube grele) is twisted a great 

 many times zigzag, without apparent order ; the second is enlarged 

 like a reservoir ; the third, which is very narrow, is called th© 

 drawing frame (la filiere). The two drawing frames unite at a 

 sharp angle at the median line, in one single tube, which, after a 

 short space, terminates in the lower lip of the animal in the form 

 of a short proboscis, which is extended or contracted at the will 

 of the worm ; its orifice enlarging and contracting at its pleasure. 

 It is surmounted by two little appendages, called feelers. 



The silky matter is secreted by the slender tube, and accumu- 

 lates little by little in the reservoir, where we find it in the form 

 of a thick gelatinous fluid, which becomes solidified and moulded 

 at the drawing frames; the two threads glued together and united 

 in one come out of the proboscis. As to the feelers above the 

 proboscis they are its organs of touch and exploration, and they 

 direct the animal in making his edifice, displaying and disposing 

 his delicate filaments in all directions, it represents the spinning 

 and drawing process at the same time. 



Every cocoon is constituted by a single thread, of which the 

 different parts are united by means of a viscious (sticky) matter, 

 which he uses as cement. A thread from three thousand to four 

 or five thousand feet long is conical in shape, and very slender 

 when examined interiorly. To form its cocoon this bonibyx first 

 builds with very strong threads a kind of scaffolding quite thick, 

 in which it incloses itself, then bends itself in the shape of a 

 horse-shoe, it continues to make all around it a silky bed, of 

 which the filaments, very short, are made zigzag by its proboscis. 

 With its feelers and fore feet it shapes it as it dries and hardens. 

 "When he has thus built a part of his edifice he builds another 

 like it at the other end. It requires his indefatigable constani 

 active labor for seventy-two hours to finish his home. Not oub 

 moment of relaxation. It is calculated that in this work his head 

 makes three hundred thousand movements — a little more than 



