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Show A SILK WORM'S THREAD. the Wonderful Creation of a Still Mora Wonderful Insect. Silk! What a wonderful product it is, and what a marvelous trade has sprung cut of it! One of the astonishing facta in the history of the human race is the way in which great results are attained for it out of little causes. It is conceivable conceiva-ble that the food of man might have been derived from some cf the largest traits or nuts or roots which grow upon the earth. The bulk of the bread of mankind man-kind "the staff of life" is, however, drawn, as all know, not from the heavy bread fruit or big tubers, ''but from the comparatively minute grains of wheat, barley and rye, millet and rice. In like manner the larger portion of the garments gar-ments of human beings is obtained from the short wool od the backs of sheep and goats or from the small pod of the cotton cot-ton plant, which hides its seeds in a ball of white fluff from which we spin the cotton. Silk is an especially notable instance in-stance of the way in which our race makes much out of little for its needs. Here la an insignificant worm which feeds upon the glutinous leaves of the mulberry and gradually fills itself with sticky compound whioh has for its direct di-rect purpose to compose the cocoon. When the time comes for the worm to undergo that strange metamorphosis Into the chrysalis, it ceases to eat and Blowly weaves round itself a casing composed entirely of one long thread. Its spinning finished, the attenuated creature takes the intermediate form preparatory to its winged state as a tnoth, nor is anything in nature more full of creative mystery and design. What the worm does for its own lonely ends man undoes for objects of beauty, fashion and comfort The silk grower patiently unwinds the lustrous thread from the point where the silkworm began be-gan to that wheue its filmy house was finished, and from this tiny plunder Bprings the whole vast edifice of the silk industry. To the small pale worm beau- raiment, nor has art anything more exquisite ex-quisite to fashion, to embroider, to bestow be-stow in splendid folds or to imitate in painting than the soft shining web which is made from the poor worm's patient labor. Extraordinary is the difference between be-tween the minute cocoon and the greac bale of Lyons or china satiu the unconscious un-conscious toil of the caterpillar and the looms that in a thousahiftactories and workshops interlace the Tiin fiber into such superb and dazzHT-tterna Nothing can imitate the charm of that fine mlijJyKjopio tissue drawn by the worm's magic from the mulberry leaf. It possesses a natural glitter which is shared by nothing else in the world and which makes it respm- ble under the microscope waving wires of gold. Manufactured into cloth, it gives us a substance at once light and warm, durable and freely taking all sorts of dyes, each creature contributing in his cocoon about 1, 000 feet of the thin thread. The west ifhew nothing of silk at all before the reign of Augustus, though, the Chinese had woven it ever since 2700 B. C. Some Persian monks first brought eggs of the silkworm in a hollow cane to Constantinople, A. D. 552. The Emperor Justinian took the business up, and so it spread to Italy, Spain and southern France, although China was still the chief source of supply. sup-ply. London Telegraph. |