FAMOUS SPINNERS 
111 
turned promptly. “ But the work is very exact¬ 
ing, and requires some one in almost constant at¬ 
tendance. To begin with, suppose you were to 
buy an ounce of silkworm eggs. How many of 
the tiny things do you suppose you would get? 
Around forty thousand. Imagine such a number 
of eggs! It would take you some time to count 
that number, would it not? You would prob¬ 
ably have the best success hatching the eggs in 
an incubator. The temperature should be about 
fifty degrees when the eggs are put in, and grad¬ 
ually raised to around seventy-three. It takes 
about nine days for the eggs to turn into grubs. 
The nearness of hatching may be noted by the 
whitening of the eggs. 
“Now the silkworm raiser’s labor begins: he 
must cover the eggs with sheets of coarse tulle, 
or with paper which has been pierced full of tiny 
holes. On this covering should be placed a fine 
sprinkling of white mulberry leaves chopped into 
tiny bits. As fast as the worms come out, they will 
crawl up on the sheet. For they are the hungri¬ 
est, most voracious little babies imaginable! At 
first they are too tiny to eat the leaves, they 
merely suck the juices. But it is astonishing 
how much juice they can imbibe in twenty-four 
hours. The sheets must be changed eight or ten 
times during this period. As soon as the worms 
have climbed up on a fresh sheet, the soiled one 
