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"Some birds eat animal food and some seed food, while others eat both; but almost all birds feed their babies upon insects. The nesting season is chiefly in spring, when all plants begin or renew their growth. Spring is also the season when the eggs of many insects hatch out and when others come from the cocoons in which they have slept all winter.
Experiments were made at the filature to ascertain the relative quantity of each of these qualities, in a given weight of cocoons, and the results were, that in fifty pounds of green cocoons, there were twenty-seven pounds of the first sort, ten pounds four ounces of the second, and twelve pounds twelve ounces of the third.
"The female silkworm spins a house which, like an egg, is a little sharper at one end than at the other. We'll choose about the same number of each gender. There is a knack in selecting good cocoons for breeding, and you've got to know lots of things about them. And after we have chosen them there will be the rest of the cocoons to sort. That will require care, too.
When you get your first crop of fine cocoons you will say it was worth it all, and you will forget that you ever were tired." "I hope so," murmured Pierre wearily. "I get discouraged standing and hearing them gnaw those leaves. I know they are just making more work for us." "You'd have far more cause to be disheartened if you didn't hear them," chuckled Josef.
"First there is the tiny egg; then comes the caterpillar with all its moultings and its ravenous appetite then follows the spinning of the cocoons; and the long sleep of the chrysalis, or aurelia, as the slumberer inside the cocoon is sometimes called. And last of all is the moth that comes out of the cocoon when we will let it and lays hundreds of eggs for future crops of silkworms.
But this subtle and beautiful snare how is it made? Where do the threads which form the silken meshes come from? Ah! you have seen the cocoons which silkworms spin, have you not?
Around the wall he can hang the twigs with their cocoons, oak galls, last year's wasp and bird nests and other treasures. He should also have a work table that a little glue or ink will not injure and a carpet that has no further use in the household. Usually one corner of the attic or cellar is just the place.
The female was climbing toward the logs also, so that a side view showed her wings already beginning to lift above her back. I had only five snapshot plates in my holders, so I was compelled to stop. It was as well, for surely the record was complete, and I was almost prostrate with excitement and heat. Several days later I opened each of the cocoons and made interior studies.
Right there the book stopped at leaf-fall early in November to await the outcome of those three cocoons. If they would yield a pair in the spring, and if that pair would emerge close enough together to mate and produce fertile eggs, then by fall of the coming year I would have a complete life history. That was a long wait, thickly punctuated with `ifs.
After some reflection, I am of the opinion that individual growers will have great difficulty in selling cocoons if they are isolated from others, and I therefore doubt the wisdom of encouraging sporadic and ill-directed efforts, which, however well meant and earnestly pursued, are much more apt to end in disappointment, discouragement, and discredit to the newly developing industry than in anything else.
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