MOTH, 
353 
violently agitated, and grows almost red with the 
efforts it uses ; its skin wrinkles and shrinks into 
folds, and the insect at length divests itself of it, 
and throws it aside with its feet. It now appears 
in a new habit, is very much increased in size, and 
feeds voraciously for five days longer, when it again 
becomes torpid, and once more quits its covering. 
It experiences two more attacks before it has arrived 
at its full growth, when it is rather more than an 
inch long. After this period it only continues to 
feed five or six days before it becomes transparent, 
with a tinge of yellow, and leaves traces of its silk 
wherever it passes. It now ceases to enjoy itself 
any longer, loses all relish for its favourite food, 
and prepares for its approaching change into a chry- 
salis, by constructing a little cell of the most ex- 
quisite beauty, where it remains enclosed a month 
or five weeks, and sometimes longer. But before 
we extricate our little prisoner from its temporary 
tomb, it will be proper to describe the manner in 
which it spins the cone or ball of silk in which the 
chrysalis is so carefully wrapped. 
In the body of the insect there are two long and 
slender bags that lie above the intestines, and con- 
tain a sort of gum, of the colour of a marigold, of 
which the worm makes its silk. The apparatus de- 
signed for the purpose of spinning the cone, has not 
been unaptly compared to a wire-drawer’s machine. 
This is a plate pierced with holes of unequal dimen- 
sions, through which gold or silver threads may be 
drawn to any degree of fineness. The silkworm has 
2 A 
VOL. II. 
