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The hatching of some of the Osmiae will therefore take place under cover of the galleries destined to be the building-yard later; and the site will be all the more deeply impressed on their memory. When I have made these comprehensive arrangements, there is nothing more to be done; and I wait patiently for the building-season to open. My Osmiae leave their cocoons in the second half of April.
At last, when the time comes that the large caterpillar should have been full fed, and it has eaten its way outwards until it rests close under the bark, preparatory to turning into a chrysalis, its enemies finish their destructive work, and, if the tree is then opened, the empty skin and cartilage skeleton of the large caterpillar is found, together with two or three large cocoons.
"But how on earth do you come to know all this, Phil?" demanded Dick, as he took one of the cocoons in his hand and examined it curiously. "I cannot tell you," answered Stukely, rather impatiently; "let it suffice you that I possess the knowledge, in some inscrutable way, ay, and a good deal more, too, of which you are like to reap the benefit in the long run."
Those cocoons with a single egg are as numerous as I can wish; they exceed my wishes: my little glass receptacles are too few to hold them. And here are others, more precious ones still, with manifold layings. I find plenty with two eggs; I find some with three or four; the best-colonised offer me as many as five.
Why not, when it is to her mother who also has known it, and she winds cocoons, too, when she is little? I have played with them for the first plaything, and indeed the only one, madame, since, when I learn what they are and how one must use them, I have knowledge enough to hold the threads, and so begin. It was work, yes, but not the work of to-day. We worked together.
In order to release themselves and emerge into the glad sunlight without disturbing the string of cocoons wherein their sisters are still sleeping, they must occupy the upper end of the row; and this, no doubt, is the reason that makes the Osmia end each of her broken layings with males.
It is, therefore, clear that the object of the sericulturist should be to raise and market as good a crop of cocoons as possible to the best advantage, and with the least possible expense and risk.
As is so often the case with the Frenchman, as compared with the Englishman of corresponding social status, he had his information cut and dried, and poured it out without hesitation. Silkworms' eggs cost 15, 20, or 25 francs an ounce, according to quality; and an ounce of good seed should produce from two to three hundred francs' worth of cocoons.
Taking the points cited in order, I would say, as regards the first and second, that although labor and time are required to raise cocoons, I am convinced that the labor and time of the kind necessary will not be found more expensive in our country than in Europe, for the following reasons: The work is a home industry.
Since I learned them, find their cocoons easiest to discover. Through the fall and winter, when riding on trains, I see them dangling from wayside thorn bushes. Once, while taking a walk with Raymond in late November, he located one on a thorn tree in a field beside the road, but he has the eyes of an Indian.
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