The next process is to wind as much as possible off the cocoons into
hanks. In Europe and in some Oriental towns this is done with improved
machinery in factories called filatures. It is usually begun when the
cocoons are fresh. Each operator has before her a basin of hot water,
the temperature of which is regulated by a steam-pipe or a fire, and
overhead is a reel turning slowly. After removing the outside flossy
covering, the operator places the cocoons in the basin, with the result
that the hot water softens the natural gum that is in the silk, and
allows it to be wound off. The filaments are passed through several
glass eyes, and crossed, and thus become glued together into a thread
which is called “singles,” and when further prepared is known as “thrown
silk.” The singles are reeled into large hanks being called a “moss,”
and each bundle a “book.”
In this form, Asiatic silk is imported into Europe and the United
States. The quantity of such silk obtained from one cocoon is very
small--seldom up to a thousand yards, generally not more than five
hundred yards. The remainder of the cocoon is either too flossy or too
entangled to be wound. This waste portion forms the material from which
spun silk is prepared. Five to six hundred cocoons weigh two pounds, and
twenty pounds of cocoons yield two pounds of spun silk. The eggs of the
silkworm were first brought to Europe by two Christian monks in 555 A.
D., who took them in hollow sticks to Constantinople, whence the
cultivation of the silkworm rapidly spread to other parts.