SILK-WORMS. 
189 
2d. When the worms are near rising, the air 
should be kept as dry as possible, that the paper 
on the wicker may dry, which is wet with the 
moisture of the excrements ; and that the vapour 
which exhales from the body of the insect may be 
absorbed and carried off, the quantity of which 
is very considerable, as we shall prove. 
3d. Should any of the worms drop off that 
had risen, they should be taken up and carried 
into the little laboratory, where the other later 
worms were put ; to avoid that the late worms 
being 1 affected by it. Do we not sec persons with delicate 
nerves, or overcharged with electricity, in convulsions, and 
even with fever, on such occasions ? Is it, then, surprising 
that worms filled with silk, which, it is well known, becomes 
electric by mere friction, although it has not the property of 
communicating its electricity to the objects surrounding it, 
— is it surprising that these insects should be much op- 
pressed and tormented by their own electricity, and by the 
superaddition of that which they receive from the atmo- 
sphere ? If to this first cause is added any other, it may 
easily be perceived what occasions the dropping off of the 
worms, and this will no longer be attributed to the sound of 
the thunder in the air, fyc. fyc. Before the storm com- 
mences, the weather is lowering, heavy, and loaded, the heat 
so suffocating that we can hardly breathe ; the vapour seems 
to oppress all nature ; no breeze is felt, no leaf stirs. The 
animal substances putrify quickly ; in short, the sultriness is 
perceptible everywhere, in the atmosphere as well as in the 
air of the laboratory. May not the silk-worms be faint, 
suffocated, in these oppressive moments ? The thunder 
and the lightning are the causes of the evil, but not the evil 
itself. — French Translator. 
