COMMERCIAL VALUE OF SPIDER SILK. 85 
different dyes. From this product, in the natural color, M. Bon obtained 
two or three pairs of stockings and gloves of an elegant gray color, which 
were presented as samples to the Academy. The pamphlet in which these 
novel results were made known attracted much attention. 
In 1710 the Academy of Sciences of Paris deemed the question suffi- 
ciently important to investigate thoroughly, and accordingly commissioned 
the eminent entomologist Reaumur to prepare a report upon the 
Reau- invention of M. Bon. Reaumur took up and prosecuted the in- 
mur’s ; ; ; : 4 
Results. ITY with much intelligence and zeal, and came to the conclusion 
that the culture of spider silk could not be made a profitable 
industry in Europe, although he intimated that exotic species might repay 
further attempts. The difficulties which proved most formidable lay both 
in the maintenance of the animals and the nature of the silk product. 
He computed that more than half a million spiders (663,522) would be 
required to produce a pound of silk, and to procure natural insect food for 
this vast multitude appeared impossible. This obstacle, however, was partly 
overcome by the discovery that spiders would subsist upon chopped earth- 
worms, and upon the soft ends or roots of feathers. 
Then the solitary habit and indiscriminate voracity of the araneans 
presented serious difficulty. They could not be trusted together, or near 
one another, for unless separated by artificial barriers they waged ceaseless 
warfare, and great numbers were slain and eaten. This cannibalistic pro- 
pensity immensely increased the difficulty of breeding and maintaining 
a spider plant. The supply of silk obtained from cocoons, moreover, 
is necessarily limited by the fact that they are not true cocoons, as 
spun by the larve of both sexes of insects, but egg bags woven by females 
alone. 
Further, M. Reaumur decided that spider silk is greatly inferior in 
strength and substance, the silk worm producing a thread ninety times as 
strong proportionately. He also adjudged the advantage to be with the 
insect silk in lustre. In both these points the spider product seemed un- 
available for weaving cloth. 
A half century after Bon’s attempt, A. D. 1762, the Abbe Raymond 
de Termeyer, a Spaniard, took up the matter, and for more than thirty 
years (1762-1796) pressed his investigations and experiments with 
Abbe admirable ingenuity and persistence, not only in Europe, but in 
Ter- South America with the large fauna of that continent. He in- 
Bzperi. vented a method of confining the spider while he reeled off the 
ments, extruded silk; but his experiments brought the establishment 
of a profitable industry in spider silk no nearer solution than 
M. Bon had done. The whole amount of thread obtained in all his ex- 
periments did not exceed fifteen pounds. Perhaps had he not been called 
away from America, his most promising field, by what he terms “an 
unexpected command and an irresistible power,” we might have chronicled 
