Show how men unraveled the buy busy silkworms silkworm secret not long ago we learned how man by watching wasps learned to make paper from wood pulp moths too had a valuable lesson for mankind it concerned the making of silk recalls george mccormack in the prairie farmer the people of china have raised silkworms for or centuries it was they who taught the world how to unwind the silk cater caterpillar mike make when they wind their cocoons cocoons aie are the sleeping bags which caterpillars live in while they are changing into moths moth for thousands of years the only silk known was that made by the silkworms then as in the case of wasps men began to study the silkworms habits and soon discovered its manufacturing secret they found that the caterpillars took a substance called cellulose a substance from certain leaves while the cellulose was going through their bodies it was changed by digestive acids into a jellylike jelly like paste which became hard when air touched it men took cellulose from cotton and wood fiber they experimented and found that when it was treated with certain acids it would form a paste much like gelatin this paste was pressed through tiny holes and given a toughening bath the result was a thread very much like the thread of the sEk silkworm worm this discovery led to the development of rayon or artificial suk su |