186 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [October, 
Notes from Japan.—III. 
By ROMYN HITCHCOCK. 
SILK REELING AND TEA FIRING. 
For two months, since the date of the last contribution from this pen, the 
writer has been so closely engaged upon the work of the eclipse expedition 
that he has not been able to write upon, much less to think about, micro- 
scopical matters. 
A plan had been formed to spend the entire summer in Yezo, among the 
Ainos, but upon reaching Yokohama he was asked to take charge of the 
photographic work of the American Eclipse Expedition to Japan, in charge 
of Prof. D. P. Todd. This afforded an opportunity to make some observa- 
tions and experiments that had long possessed an interest to him, and the 
plan for some original work in this connection had already been formed in 
his mind. But the unexpected invitation came too late to permit of the nec- - 
essary preparations, hence the additions to knowledge are not so great as 
they might have been. 
The eclipse station was at the town of Shirakawa, about 113 miles north 
of Tokio. _ It is an important centre of the silk industry, and a few words 
about this may not be out of place. 
The silk-worms are grown in houses scattered here and there through the 
village, and fed with mulberry leaves that are brought in from the country in 
large cylindrical packages, loaded on pack-horses. The season of feeding — 
ends about the middle of August. 
The cocoons are spun in large bamboo, or straw, basket-work trays, fur- 
nished with ingeniously twisted wraps of straw to afford places of attachment 
for the cocoons. One of these large trays, with the cocoons attached, will be 
sent to the National Museum at Washington. 
The reeling is done both in private houses and in two large filatures. The 
hand reeling i is done by girls, who are able to earn, when very skilful, what 
is equivalent to eight cents for a day of eleven hours. 
The cocoons are first sorted, and the different qualities set apart. Passing 
along the streets, great quantities of them may be seen spread on mats in 
front of the houses, almost dazzling in their snowy whiteness when the sun 
is bright. In this way the chrysalis i is killed by the heat of the sun. They 
are then gathered in neat bamboo baskets, which are the cocoon measures. 
The unit is the sho. One sho is equal to 1.804 litres, or 0.397 of a gallon. 
One girl will reel, by hand-reel, about three so of cocoons in one day, 
from which she will get ten #zomme of thread (1 momme = 3.757 grammes 
= 0.1325 ounce). I believe this information to be correct, although it is ex- 
tremely difficult to get accurate information of this kind from the Japanese. 
Apparently they do not know just what the average product of their labor 
is, and the most conflicting statements are given by different individuals do- 
ing the same work. There seems to be no intention to deceive; but a 
Japanese always has an answer ready, and sometimes it requires to be veri- 
fied. As an indication of this, I was told at the filature that 12 mzomme are 
produced from 1 sho of cocoons. The discrepancies are serious, but at pres- 
ent, pending further investigation of the subject, I.am inclined to believe that 
the former statement is true for or dinary hand reeling. One hundred momme 
of hand-reeled silk, of first quality, known as &7- wa (fresh thread), is worth 
$3.00. Such thread is made up of six fibres running together from as many 
cocoons. 
The operations of reeling are very simple, but require great skill and ex- 
perience. The girl sits, Japanese fashion, beside the reel, and turning the 
