A caterpillar, which the Indians name sustillo, and by which a paper
is fabricated, very similar to that made in China, is bred in the pacae,
a tree well known in Peru. In proportion to the vigour and majestic
growth of this tree, is the number of the insects it nourishes, and
which are of the kind and size of the bombyx, or silk-worm. When they
are completely satiated, they unite at the body of the tree, seeking the
part which is best adapted to the extension they have to take. They then
form, with the greatest symmetry and regularity, a web which is larger
or smaller, according to the number of the operators; and more or less
pliant, according to the quality of the leaf by which they have been
nourished, the whole of them remaining beneath. This envelope, on which
they bestow such a texture, consistency, and lustre, that it cannot be
decomposed by any practicable expedient, having been finished, they
all of them unite, and ranging themselves in vertical and even files,
form in the centre a perfect square. Being thus disposed, each of them
makes its cocoon, or pod, of a coarse and short silk, in which it is
transformed from the grub into the chrysalis, and from the chrysalis
into the papilio, or moth. In proportion as they afterwards quit their
confinement, to take wing, they detach wherever it is most convenient
to them, their envelope, or web, a portion of which remains suspended
to the trunk of the tree, where it waves to and fro like a streamer,
and which becomes more or less white, according as the air and humidity
of the season and situation admit. This natural silk paper has been
gathered measuring a yard and a half, of an elliptical shape, which
is peculiar to all of it.