S34- DIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 



deceive me) upon the Euonymus, and from the twigs of 

 which (not the cocoon) I unwound it. It is even asserted 

 that in Germany a manufacture of silk from the cocoons 

 of the emperor moth [Bombyx Pavonia) has been esta- 

 blished a . There seems no question, however, that silk 

 might be advantageously derived from many native silk- 

 worms in America. An account is given in the Philoso- 

 phical Transactions of one found there, whose cocoon is 

 not only heavier and more productive of silk than that of 

 the common kind, but is so much stronger that twenty 

 threads will carry an ounce more b . Don Luis Nee ob- 

 served on Psydium jpomiferum and pyriferum ovate nests 

 of caterpillars eight inches long, of gray silk, which the 

 inhabitants of Chilpancingo, Tixtala, &c. in America, 

 manufacture into stockings and handkerchiefs . Great 

 numbers of similar nests of a dense tissue, resembling 

 Chinese paper, of a brilliant whiteness, and formed of di- 

 stinct and separable layers, the interior being the thin- 

 nest and extraordinarily transparent, were observed by 

 Humboldt in the provinces of Mechoacan and the moun- 

 tains of Santarosa at a height of 10,500 feet above the 

 level of the sea, upon the Arbutus Madrono and other 

 trees. The silk of these nests, which are the work of the 

 social caterpillars of a Bombyx (B. Madrono, H.), was 

 an object of commerce even in the time of Montezuma, 

 and the ancient Mexicans pasted together the interior 

 layers, which may be written upon without preparation, 

 to form a white glossy pasteboard. Handkerchiefs are 

 still manufactured of it in the intendency of Oaxaca d . 



a Latr. Hist. Nat. xiv. 150. >> Pullein in Phil. Tram. 1759. 54. 

 e Annuls of Botany, ii. 104. A Political Essay on N. Spain, m. 59, 



