OCR Text |
Show IU, Jjetbod of One Englishman Com-I Com-I pared with the Besearches of I Noted frenchmen. Iaboe in peoduoino QUANTITIES, laccess With American and African In-I In-I sects ItemB and Notes of I Special Interest. I M Emile Gautier, a French writer, V cussed in an article the history of Vievt from the consoler of the prisoner etllison down to the nutritive spider in thorn the geometrician Laplace found L flavor of a nut. f There are also, it appears, spinning lders whose web can be used to weave trviceable stuffs, and according to old rLeiits dealing with the subject, M. I n president of the court of accounts feaontpellicr, sent, as early as 1709, Jittens and stockings made of spiders' rb t0 the Academy of Sciences. iHe set to work in the following man-I man-I Having collected a large number of Ljers' cocoons he beat them so aa to Lei all dust. Then he washed them fcrefally in warm water and allowed ton to boil for three hours in a pot con-tning con-tning water, soap, saltpeter and a little rjnarabic. The cocoons, after being Lhfd and carefully dried, were at last Irded with extremely fine combs, f This was, of course, a very primitive loceeding. M. Bon obtained a gray read with which he was able to make e articles before mentioned. The Lphlet which he published regarding t fjperinicnt obtained considerable trcess, and was translated into several tgsages. v I FKENCH EXPERIMENTS. I Fifty years later, in 1762, the Abbe Lymond de Termeyer made experi-(ent experi-(ent in America, in Spain, and in aly. He worked on the living spiders, jtae web he wound on a bobbin as fast I it came out. This abbe was remark-llyjiatient remark-llyjiatient and tenacious, for he car-Li car-Li on this operation uninterruptedly it thirty-four years (from 1763 to 1796), It apparently all his labor was in vain, r he only succeeded in obtaining 673 hiames of cobweb aa a result of his lirty-four years' work. The question, however, seemed suf-liently suf-liently interesting to the Academy of fences of Paris to induce them to large the celebrated Reaumur with e tawing up of a report on the inven-ta inven-ta of M. Bon. iReadinur arrived at conclusions very Ifavorable to tho development of a coble!) cob-le!) industry. Stuff, he said, made of so liW spiders' silk could not be employed Itha manufacture of any useful article, I account of its fragileness. (The strength of the silk thread was lnety times greater than that of the Iber, and it required 18,000 threads of iders web to furnish solidity equal to 1st of one silken thread. The learned Itcmologist demonstrated further that lice as many spiders as silkworms Ire needed to produce the same quan-ly quan-ly of thread, so that to provide one Innd of spiders' silk 28,000 spiders loald have to spin. , To obtain such a pber of cocoons a much larger num-Irof num-Irof spiders would have to be kept, for , fcy the females spin web round eggs, lien, again, the product of the spider Id less luster than that of the silk lorm. Reaumur added, however, that hongh there was no future for the t'lers of France, except to catch blue-Ittles blue-Ittles and flies, the exotic kinds might pay the labor of study. ' I AN ENGLISHMAN'S SUCCESS. ; pe idea has recently been taken up I an Englishman named Stillbers, who l! made cloth of spider's web which has employed for the purposes of suf- Ho only uses tropical spiders, In wliich, thanks to a scientific cult-K cult-K he has obtained a much greater re-Pthan re-Pthan was foreseen by Reaumur. pe spiders which he uses are big ones lm America and Africa. They: are pd in octagonal cases, where a suffi-P?of suffi-P?of insects is served to them every h In the room where the. cases are w a constant temperature of 60 deg. fcnheit) is maintained, and a liquid Pposed of chloroform, ether and fusel ii allowed slowly to evaporate. . That P say, spiders spin best when they f drank. . . Stillbers keeps 5,000 of these caees room forty meters long by twenty fto and five high. ' The spiders lay fcof various colors, covered with pns. These are gathered up and 4 Ipared by the same mechanical and cal operations as the cocoon of the Ebyx, he cocoon yields 120 to 150 meters of :ai The weaving .process is kept lately secret. stuff obtained is of a texture reeling re-eling ordinary silk, but thick, stiff, lo' a dirty gray color. It is all the "iiecesaary to bleach it because the t is by no means uniform. It is m by treatment with oxygenized te Then it is tanned and softened. Klines a pretty yellow tint, and be- brilliant and smooth. " make a thread 3,250 kilometers in 25,000 cocoons are requisite. This (great advance on Reaumur's calcu- But still 25,000 cocoons only w a thread of 800 French leagues in The stuff obtained must be sold ',ery high price in order to obtain et compensation for all this J and expense. Proprietors of V 'rJ trees and silkworms need not of the competition of the spider Wiule.-New York Evening Sun. |