160 
THE ART OF REARING 
strengthens their constitution, and makes them 
livelier. The strips they occupy should be 
widened whenever they are fed. 
Fourth Day of the Fifth Age. 
(Twenty-sixth of the Rearing of the Silk-worm.) 
This day the silk-worms will want 540 pounds 
weight of sorted leaves ; the first feed should be 
of 120 pounds weight, and the last of 150. 
The worms now are beginning to grow vora- 
cious ; they grow handsomer and stronger ; some 
are two inches and a halftone. 
D 
Fifth Day of the Fifth Age. 
(Twenty-seventh of the Rearing of the Silk- worm.) 
The worms will this day want 810 pounds of 
picked leaves; the first feed of 150 pounds, and 
the last meal of 210 pounds weight. 
If necessary, the silk-worms should have some 
intermediate food ; when the regular distribu- 
tion of leaves is devoured in less than an hour and 
a half, the worms must not be suffered to fast 
five hours, but receive some leaves in the interim, 
particularly if there should have been wickers on 
which the worms had not been as well fed as 
the others at first. For although I have fixed 
the quantity of food for this day, it is always 
necessary to be regulated by experience : should 
the worms want more food, they must be given it. 
