70 WILDER, TERMEYER's 



dant or may become so by the facility of obtaining and rear- 

 ing them, by collecting it from the cocoons, and by drawing 

 the threads from the spider, why, since you have now been 

 occupied with this subject for forty years, have you not 

 made stuflfs and netted goods and other fabrics in great 

 abundance, whence some profit might have accrued, and the 

 incredulous have been convinced by results, so much more 

 successful arguments than reasoning ? I should be quite in 

 tho wrong to disdain any inquiry so put ; but I reply that 

 where the reasoning is sound and based upon unquestion- 

 able experiments, even though it may not be confirmed by 

 experience, it should not therefore fail to convince. 1 reply 

 in the second place, that I have in fact collected, I will not 

 say a great deal of the spider's silk, Lut a quantity sufl&cient 

 to make several purses, which I gaw to my friends, and the 

 abovementioned stockings; and I had already in 1796 pre- 

 pared twenty-two ounces of such silk, taken from virgin 

 cocoons, hardly completed by the diadetna spider, and there- 

 fore very clean ; but, in the hasty removal of my goods on 

 account of the siege of the fortress, it was lost or sto- 

 len. I will reply thirdly, that what I have not done was 

 done by President Le Bon in the last century, when he col- 

 lected spider's silk in quantity sufficient to form a suit of 

 clothes, which he presented to Ludovic XIV, of which we 

 have Lesser^^ to witness, and the 'renowned Latin poet, Va- 

 niere,'^ who relates it both in prose and verse in a little work 

 dedicated to Le Bon himself; it cannot be supposed that he 

 was deceived, or wished to deceive others, when, speaking 

 of the spider, he sung, — 



" lUins, inspreto serum jam munere, Reges 

 Stamine membra tegunt." 



Let us conclude. The difficulties proposed by the cel- 

 ebrated Reaumur, in the way of a profitable culture of spiders 

 for the purpose of obtaining silk from them, are either sur- 

 mountable or unreal. They can be obtained in great num- 

 bers, are easily collected, multiplied and fed, producing 

 many cocoons, and giving much silk, and this is strong, beau- 



11. Vol. II, Book 2, Chap. 1. 



12. Eclogue to the illustrious Le Bon. Tolos. 1724. 



