ny considerable quantity of silk. One ounce of eggs
or grains produces, four rup, or one hundred Nice pounds of cocons; and
one rup, or twenty-five pounds of cocons, if they are rich, gives three
pounds of raw silk; that is, twelve pounds of silk are got from one
ounce of grains, which ounce of grains its produced by as many worms as
are inclosed in one pound, or twelve ounces of cocons. In preserving
the cocons for breed, you must choose an equal number of males and
females; and these are very easily distinguished by the shape of the
cocons; that which contains the male is sharp, and the other obtuse, at
the two ends. In ten or twelve days after the cocon is finished, the
worm makes its way through it, in the form of a very ugly, unwieldy,
aukward butterfly, and as the different sexes are placed by one another
on paper or linen, they immediately engender. The female lays her eggs,
which are carefully preserved; but neither she nor her mate takes any
nourishment, and in eight or ten days after they quit the cocons, they
generally die. The silk of these cocons cannot be wound, because the
animals in piercing through them, have destroyed the continuity of the
filaments. It is therefore, first boiled, and then picked and carded
like wool, and being afterwards spun, is used in the coarser stuffs of
the silk manufacture. The other cocons, which yield the best silk, are
managed in a different manner. Before the inclosed worm has time to
penetrate, the silk is reeled off with equal care and ingenuity. A
handful of the cocons are thrown away into a kettle of boiling water,
which not only kills the animal, but dissolves the glutinous substance
by which the fine filaments of the silk cohere or stick together, so
that they are easily wound off, without breaking. Six or seven of these
small filaments being joined together are passed over a kind of
twisting iron, and fixed to the wheel, which one girl turns, while
another, with her hands in the boiling water, disentangles the threads,
joins them when they chance to break, and supplies fresh cocons with
admirable dexterity and dispatch. There is a manufacture of this kind
just without one of the gates of Nice, where forty or fifty of these
wheels are worked together, and give employment for some weeks to
double the number of young women. Those who manage the pods that float
in the boiling water must be very alert, otherwise they will scald
their fingers. The smell that comes from the b