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Show -oo SELLING THE DYE STUFF PROBLEM It has been discovered that by putting silkworms on special foods they can be made to spin different colored silk threads. Up to the present, of course, the silk threads produced commercial. y have always been white or ye-low. ye-low. More people who have kept the silkworms for a hobbv. have experimented with feeding them on dyed leaves and so getting different dif-ferent colored silks, but this method meth-od is not practical when silk is being produced for the market.. By the new method the silkworms are partly fed on mulberry leaves and partly on osage leaves, and it is the careful allowances of the two fods which make the caterpillar cater-pillar spin red and blue silk, the two foods wJiich make the eater-been eater-been successfuly produced. It takes 3000 caterpillars to produce a pound of silk, and when tliey begm they spin at the rate of six inches a minute. Each cater, pillar will produce from 500 to 1000 yards of continuous thread Pearson's Weekly. |