“This is a piece of Sister’s new silk dress,” said the boy named
Billy. “It looks as though the fairies had woven it out of
cobwebs.”
“It was made by something more wonderful than fairies, if that is
possible,” said Somebody. “It was spun by a queer little worm who
needed it for his own slumber robe, and had no idea in the world
of giving it to sister for a party dress.”
“You mean the silk-worm’s cocoon, of course,” said the boy named
Billy.
“About 4,500 years ago there was a Chinese Empress whose name
was Si-Ling-Shi, who used to spend a great deal of time in her
garden, and as she loved Nature very much she became interested
in the worms who lived on her mulberry trees. There were so many
of them, and the thread they spun was so strong and beautiful
that she thought if it could be unrolled without being tangled or
broken it could undoubtedly be spun into a web.
“She knew if the chrysalis were left alive to emerge the thread
would be broken and spoiled, so she had some of the cocoons
devitalized and experiments proved her theories correct.
“The rest of the world tried hard to induce China to give their
secret of silk-making but to no avail, so the Emperor Justinian
sent some young monks to China to study and to get the secret.
After some years they went back to Constantinople with enough
eggs of the silk-worm butterfly in their hollow pilgrim staffs to
begin raising them.
“But even after they had the eggs it was not easy to raise them
as the children of Mr. and Mrs. Bombyx Mori can only be raised
where the mulberry tree will grow.”
“After they get the cocoons how do they get the silk unwound?”
asked the boy named Billy.
“That’s interesting,” said Somebody. “I had a chance to see the
process at the Panama Pacific Fair. When the worm is ready to
spin, and has shed his coat four times, he is about three weeks
old. Then he hangs himself on the limb of the tree which has
nourished him, and begins to spin. He moves his head around for
three whole days, spinning two threads at the same time, until
he is completely covered, when he stops spinning and starts to
transform. He has spun about 1,200 yards of double-threaded silk.
Of course he must not live to emerge so after three or four days
he is put in a gently heated oven until he is dead. Then he is
immersed in hot water and stirred with a long-handled brush until
the ends of the threads are loosened, when he is put into another
pan of hot water with several other cocoons and the ends of the
threads are passed through an eyelet to keep them from tangling
and are wound upon spools or reels into pale golden skeins of
what is called raw silk. Afterward it is bleached and colored and
woven into webs,” said Somebody.
“That’s got any fairy story beaten a mile,” said Billy. “I’d
really like to try out that process with Lady Luna’s cocoon, but
she is such a beauty after she comes out that it would be too bad
to destroy her.”
“Indeed it would,” said Somebody, “and we’ve got to have beauty
as well as utility in this world, Billy.”
“Sure,” said Billy grinning, but he understood.
[Illustration: The Fairies in the West of England are very
careful of the Strawberry Crop]