JJq, 3.] Silkworms in India. 153 



and finally to dark-purplish slate. On the eighth day the worms begin to appear as 

 tiny black specks. The egg cloth is then covered with tender mulberry leaves to 

 which the worms speedily crawl. The earliest risers are considered the best worms, 

 and the worms which do not crawl at all are considered too weak and worthless 

 and are usually rejected. The selected ones are then kept in large circular trays, 

 being fed in them without any change of bed and without being disturbed in the 

 least. In these trays during all their life they molt, defecate, and here the refuse 

 of their food accumulates till the mass attains to almost the level of the tray. By 

 that time the worms show by their restlessness and their attempts to spin that they 

 are ripe ; they are then picked out by the hand and deposited in the cocooning trays. 

 These are of large size, from three to four feet in diameter, and within them is a 

 long ribbon of plaited bamboo a couple of inches broad, wound round with the edges 

 on the flat of the tray, in a helix or spiral. The worms are scattered over these 

 trays by the handful without any care or regularity, and, left to themselves, they soon 

 begin to spin. . . . They finish the cradle in about six hours ; in eight or 

 ten hours the worms have disappeared from view, and in from 24 to 36 hours the 

 cocoon is completed. In from 48 to 50 hours the last transformation is effected, and 

 then the insect sleeps for eight or ten days, and eventually emerges a moth. The 

 male is active and restless, seeking a mate ; the female remains quiet until found by a 

 male. 



" The whole treatment of the worm from its first entrance into the world to the 

 time it disappears from sight within its silken enclosure is careless, slovenly, and 

 dirty. No separate place is provided, except it be that a portion of the family sleeping, 

 room is screened off with a kalaga. The trays are never changed, the excreta never 

 removed, the refuse of the food never cleared out, and all this, with the sloughs 

 of the molts together with the silk the worm makes at. all times, form a dense 

 matting of stinking, fermenting materials, which must be deleterious to the healthy 

 growth of an insect so sensitive as the silkworm. Under such circumstances it 

 would be surprising if the worms were not subject to disease. Enquiries amongst the 

 breeders of Kynegyi and Shwelag proved the truth of such suspicions. As a matter 

 of fact the mortality amongst the worms was said to be always great, and sickness 

 often swept away large broods. Hence the men were anxious to secure seed of the 

 Bengal worm ; and as a matter of fact breeders rarely depend on their own seed to 

 any great extent, but purchase fresh stock annually from the itinerant Shan traders 

 who bring in quantities of eggs from the Karen States beyond the frontier. 



"(After the cocoons have matured and before the exit of the moths, they are pre- 

 pared for reeling. Torn away from the cocooning trays by handfuls, they are thrown 

 into baskets, and then the women and children of the family divest the pods of all 

 their waste or floss. Then, without sorting or selection of any kind, except that the 

 yellow and white pods are kept apart, the cocoons are put into a chattie, or earthen pot, 

 of water and slowly simmered over a fire. The reeler, generally a woman, who makes 

 it her sole business to reel silk, tries the pods after they have simmered for a while, and 

 as soon as she finds the fibre come away easily, she picks up a handful of cocoons each 

 by a thread of silk, — the number usually being from 18 to 25, — shakes them well to a 

 sufficient length, and then runs them through a loop of brass wire on to a reel fixed 

 to a pair of cross-sticks of bamboo. From the reel the filaments are given a slight 

 twist and carried on to a cylinder of wood with a handle and turning on a trestle. 

 One woman manages the whole operation. She sits beside the fire opposite the pot 

 over which the cross-sticks with the loop and reel are supported. In her right hand 

 she holds an iron fork, with which she regulates the outcome of the threads from 



