chiefly nourishes.
The smallest output of raw silk is from the most northerly prefecture
and from the prefecture in the extreme south-west of the mainland. But
human aptitude plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is
a wonderful piece of mechanism--look at the hands of the next Japanese
you meet--and in sericulture its delicate touch is used to the utmost
advantage.

The gains of sericulture are not made without corresponding
sacrifices. Silk-worm raising is infinitely laborious. The constant
picking of leaves, the bringing of them home and the chopping and
supplying of these leaves to the smallest of all live stock and the
maintenance of a proper temperature in the rearing-chamber day and
night mean unending work. The silk-worms may not be fed less than four
or five times in the day; in their early life they are fed seven or
eight times. This is the feeding system for spring caterpillars.
Summer and autumn breeds must have two or three more meals. The men
and women who attend to them, particularly the women, are worn out by
the end of the season. "The women have only three hours' rest in the
twenty-four hours," I remember someone saying. "They never loose their
_obi_."

When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the
silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry
leaves are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less
fine as the silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves
adhering to the shoots are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to
supply from the very beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots.
The caterpillars live in bamboo trays or "beds" on racks. In the house
of one farmer I found caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch
long occupying fifteen trays. When the silk-worms grew larger they
would occupy two hundred trays.

The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought adhering to cards
about a foot square. There are usually marked on these cards
twenty-eight circles about 2 ins. in diameter. Each circle is covered
with eggs. The eggs come to be arranged in these convenient circles
because, as will be explained later on, the moths have been induced to
lay within bottomless round tins placed on the circles on the cards.
The eggs are sticky when laid and therefore adhere. In a year
35,000,000 cards, containing about a billion eggs, are produced on
some 10,000 egg-raising farms.

The eggs--they are called "seed"--are