Various

“ Its delicate texture, and weakly form, would seam to mark it as an insect ill calculated to endure the inclement season appointed as its proper period of existence. But nature knows her own business best; and, accordingly, these slender creatures brave the tempestuous weather they are doomed to encounter, totally regardless of the cold, the wet, the winds, and the fogs of November and December ”

“ In this manner, he existed for some days, sleeping in the woods at night, and roving abroad in the day; but the supply of seals at last failed him, nor could he find another tortoise, and starvation began once more to stare him in the face. It happened that the weather was particularly pleasant, and he often refreshed himself by sleeping on the warm sand; a gun would have been the means of supplying him with plenty of water-fowl, and he often had the vexation of seeing quantities of such birds fly past him with impunity. ”

“ Induced by the offer of a great reward, they once more returned to China, and succeeded, after many efforts, in eluding the vigilance of that suspicious people, and bringing to Constantinople a number of the eggs of the silk-worm, concealed in the head of a walking-cane; these were hatched by the heat of a hot-bed, and being afterwards carefully fed and attended to, the experiment, which had cost these enterprising men so much toil, was perfectly successful, and the cultivation of the silk-worm became very general over the whole of Greece. ”

“ He ascended the high trees, but his view was constantly intercepted by forests and elevated hills wooded to their summits. Hunger now forced on him the necessity of seeking some means of subsistence; he accordingly prepared with his knife a formidable bludgeon, and scarcely had an hour passed when, startled by a rustling among the underwood, he expected some kind of animal to sally forth, but was surprised to see a large black snake glide out from its concealment and raise its head, "nimble in threats," at his approach. ”

“ In 1554, while its manufacture was yet but little known in England, a curious law was passed by the tyrannical Mary, for the purpose of assisting the consumption of home productions, by which it was enacted, "that whoever shall wear silk, in or upon his or her hat, bonnet, or girdle, scabbard, hose, shoes, or spur-leather, shall be imprisoned during three months, and forfeit ten pounds," making, however, a few exceptions in favour of persons of distinction. ”

“ They calculate that the same number of insects, which would, if they had attained their full size, in from twenty-three to twenty-five days, produce twenty-five ounces of silk, would only yield twenty ounces if their growth occupied twenty-eight days, and only ten ounces if forty days. During the first twenty-four hours of the creature's existence, the patient Chinese feeds the objects of his care forty-eight times, or once every half hour, and during the second day and night thirty times, and so on, reducing the number of meals as the worms grow older ”

“ Ivan's Church, at Moscow, weighs more than fifty-seven tons. It is used only on important occasions. "When it sounds," says Dr. Clarke, "a deep and hollow murmur vibrates all over Moscow, like the fullest and lowest tones of a vast organ, or the rolling of distant thunder."
"The Great Bell of Moscow, known to be the largest ever founded, (its weight being upwards of four hundred and thirty thousand pounds,) is in a deep pit in the midst of the palace of the Kremlin, (the central and highest part of the city) . ”

“ The silk, when reeled off in this manner, is called singles, and is used in weaving to form the weft, that is, the thread that crosses the cloth from side to side. Another description of silk threads, are called trams, and these consist of two or three singles twisted together; but the strongest and most valuable sort is the organzine, which is formed by placing skeins of singles upon a reel, and as they are wound off, they are, by the assistance of machinery, strongly twisted. ”

“ The intelligent observer of nature, from whose writings we have been permitted to make some extracts, has been greatly struck with coincidences of this kind; and he mentions, with interest, an idea suggested in the same work, of forming "a calendar, by which the flowering of a plant should acquaint us with the appearance of a bird, and the appearance of an insect tell us the flowering of a plant." ”

“ Every day is to them a year, and has in a manner the four seasons; the morning is the spring, the middle of the day the summer, the evening the autumn, and the night the winter."
While it remains in the state of a caterpillar, the Silk-worm changes its coat four times, and previous to each moult refuses its food, and appears in a very sickly condition. As soon as its nest or cocoon is finished, and it has changed into the pupa-state, the cocoons are carefully removed from the place where the animal had formed them ”

“ The first process in preparing the silk, is winding it off the cocoons: for this purpose, after the rough outsides are removed, several handfuls at a time are thrown into a vessel containing water, and placed over a gentle fire, the water is then allowed to be heated to nearly the boiling point; a short stunted brush formed of heath or any other shrub of that description, is now gently moved about among the cocoons, and on withdrawing it from the water, the ends of the silk are found to have adhered to it in several places ”

“ The time that elapses while the silk-worm is undergoing its changes, varies according to the warmth of the weather, and the quantity of nourishment with which it is supplied; the Chinese, who are very particular on this head, take the greatest pains to supply the little creature with food, as on this they say depends the quantity of silk which the worm will produce. ”

“ In 1685, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the persecution of the protestants in France, compelled many merchants, manufacturers and workmen to take refuge in England. Of these, a large number who had been employed in the silk manufacture resorted to Spitalfields, and at the present time, descendants of these emigrants may be found on the spot, engaged in the same employment. ”

“ The Silk-worm in not the only creature that produces [Pg 3] substances of this description, for many other kinds of butterflies and moths do the same; a kind of silk has also been manufactured from the webs of spiders, and as they require less attention than the Silk-worms, the plan might have answered, had it not been for the ravenous appetites of the little spinners, who, when brought together in any quantity very speedily devour each other. Certain shell-fish also produce a kind of silky thread ”

“ On recovering a little, the want of food became insupportable; he hobbled along shore in search of shell-fish, but was obliged to put up with wild shrubs. He sheltered himself this night in the woods which skirted the see, and in the morning returned to the task of procuring subsistence. With this intent he walked along the beach, and at a rocky part of the shore he perceived several seals; some of them were reposing on the sand, while others lay upon the rocks. ”

“ Some idea may be formed of the extent to which the silk manufacture is carried on at present in England, by the fact that no less a quantity than four million, six hundred and ninety three thousand, five hundred and seventeen pounds of raw silk were imported for home consumption, in the year ending January 1831. ”

“ In several parts of the East Indies, the silk-worm has been introduced, as might have been expected, with complete success; and, in Bengal alone, the factories find employment for upwards of two hundred thousand persons.
THE MANAGEMENT OF THE WORM.
Silk is the production of a species of Moth, called the Phalæna mori or Mulberry moth, and its original locality, as we have already stated, appears to have been China or Persia. The changes that butterflies or moths undergo, having already been described at page 212 of Vol. ”

“ Our forefathers probably paid more attention to the periodical occurrences of Nature, as guides for direction in their domestic and rural occupations, than we of the present day are accustomed to do. They seem to have referred to the Book of Nature more frequently and regularly than to the almanack. ”

“ The Christian member of a Christian household has this heavenly and solacing assurance, "that so strong, so unearthly become the bonds which unite those who have long lived together in the unity of the Spirit, no less than community of blood ”

“ That wasps, whose ordinary food seems to be fruit, yet occasionally devour insects, there can be no doubt, as, even in summer, they may often be seen to attack and devour the flies in the windows. When they make their first appearance in spring, [Pg 7] there is no fruit for them; therefore they may, at that season resort to hawthorn-hedges, which abound with the larvæ of various insects. The song of the cuckoo is found to occur at the time of the appearance of the Papilio cardamines, (or orange-tipped butterfly.) ”

“ In the second, the cocoons being completed by the insect, are being cleared of dirt and dead leaves, before they are removed from the frames on which they had spun. The third represents the [Pg 4] winding off the silk into singles, but the windster appears for the moment to have left her post for the purpose of blowing the fire. In the fourth engraving, a Chinese silk-loom, is shown; the figure seated above, among the machinery, appears to assist the labour by means of her weight. ”

“ The next morning he finished the remains of the tortoise, and he then mus [Pg 6] tered up resolution to enter the forest, in order to keep a look-out from the mountain from whence he had beheld the American ship prepare for sailing. He succeeded in gaining the summit, and remained all this day viewing the distant horizon, but no sail appeared, and the night passed heavily. About the middle of the next day, he was obliged by hunger to return to the beach, the island being destitute of berries or fruits. ”

“ We cannot keep our bodies long here, they are corruptible bodies, and will tumble into dust; we must part with them for a while, and if ever we expect and desire a happy meeting again, we must use them with modesty and reverence now.——Sherlock. ”

“ The nominal professions of religion with which many persons content themselves, seem to fit them for little else than to disgrace Christianity by their practice.——Milner.
A kind refusal is sometimes as gratifying as a bestowal: he who can alleviate the pain of an ungracious act is unpardonable unless he do so. ”

“ The place where their habitation is built must be retired, free from noisome smells, cattle and all noises; a noisome smell, or the least fright, make great impressions upon so tender a breed; even the barking of dogs and the crowing of cocks are capable of putting them in disorder, when they are newly hatched. ”

“ Two or three of these are then taken, and the whole again twisted together to form a stronger thread; this thread is the organzine, and is used for the warp or length of the cloth.
The process of making organzine, is called throwing, and the throwsters form a very important branch of the silk business. Before the year 1719, the whole of the thrown silk used in England came from abroad, but at that time Sir Thomas Lombe and his brother erected a large mill at Derby for the purpose of forming organzine, and obtained an exclusive patent for its manufacture, for the term of fourteen years ”

“ If a man will look at most of his prejudices, he will find that they arise from his field of view being necessarily narrow, like the eye of the fly. He can have but little better notions of the whole scheme of things, as has been well said, than a fly on the pavement of St. ”

“ For the purpose of paying them every attention, an affectionate mother is provided for the worms, who is careful to supply their wants; she is called Isan-mon, mother of the worms. She takes possession of the chamber, but not till she has washed herself and put on clean clothes, which have not the least ill smell ”

“ The manufacture of this important article, gradually spread through the whole of Italy and Spain, but it was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the reign of Francis the First, that it was introduced into France. ”