United States or Tanzania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Even the silkworm, the third chief source of wealth here, has suffered from a parasite. But the peasant-owner of the soil never loses heart. He drives his plough across the ruined vineyard, digs up the madder-field, plants other crops, and cheerfully accepts a fourth part of former profits.
A ganglion can usually be got rid of by a modification of the old-fashioned seton. The skin and cyst wall are transfixed by a stout needle carrying a double thread of silkworm gut; some of the colourless jelly escapes from the punctures; the ends of the thread are tied and cut short, and a dressing is applied. A week later the threads are removed and the minute punctures are sealed with collodion.
You have perhaps heard the famous verse of Dean Swift: "So naturalists observe, a flea Has smaller that upon them prey And these have smaller still to bite 'em And so proceed ad infinitum." Among our insect friends the leading place belongs either to the honey bee or the silkworm.
The secretion of the mouth in infants is acid, disease increases this acidity; and it has been found that this acid state is not merely favourable to the increase of thrush, but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence, just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to light by recent scientific research.
Admit the supremacy of the individual reason, and she could not deny "that the individual mind is the generating principle of all human knowledge; that the soul of man is like the silkworm, which weaves its universe out of its own being; that the whole mass of knowledge to which we can ever attain lies potentially within us from the beginning; that all truth is nothing more than a self-development."
As we see that those variations which under domestication appear at any particular period of life, tend to reappear in the offspring at the same period; for instance, in the seeds of the many varieties of our culinary and agricultural plants; in the caterpillar and cocoon stages of the varieties of the silkworm; in the eggs of poultry, and in the colour of the down of their chickens; in the horns of our sheep and cattle when nearly adult; so in a state of nature, natural selection will be enabled to act on and modify organic beings at any age, by the accumulation of profitable variations at that age, and by their inheritance at a corresponding age.
For daily use there was also a perfectly simple grey pottery. Silk was already in use at this time. The invention of sericulture must therefore have dated from very ancient times in China. It undoubtedly originated in the south of China, and at first not only the threads spun by the silkworm but those made by other caterpillars were also used.
These beds, which covered several acres of very rich soil, were thickly planted with all kinds of fruit and tree-bearing seeds; together with grape cuttings, mulberries for the silkworm culture, quinces, currants, tea plants, a great variety of berries, a fine selection of ornamental shrubbery, dwarf fruit trees, roses, and many other plants besides.
The covering grows thicker and the room for the silkworm grows smaller. After about seventy-two hours, put your ear to the cocoon, and if all is quiet within, it is completed and the worm is shut up within it. Strange things happen to him while he sleeps in the quiet of his silken bed, for he becomes a dry brown chrysalis without head or feet.
The demonstration that putrefaction and decay were caused by bacteria, and the early proof that the silkworm disease was produced by a micro-organism, led to the suggestion that the inflammatory diseases accompanying wounds were similarly caused. There are many striking similarities between these troubles and putrefaction, and the suggestion was an obvious one.
Word Of The Day