STORIES OF INSECT LIFE. THE SILKWORM. 'Nature has poured her bounties forth, N former chapters we have gossiped much of caterpillars and moths, but I have told you nothing of that most valuable little insect of all, the silkworm, which weaves such a glorious tissue of golden beauty in which to enwrap itself during its season of pupahood. Other moths and butterflies may exceed it in the richness and varied colouring of their gossamer wings; but they leave behind them no memorial of their useful you,' once more said the kind poet, 'if there are two in heaven, and only five left in this world?' But you remember how she still answered 'Seven.' When she counted up the number of her brothers and sisters, she counted the dead ones too; she could not think that, though her brother and sister had gone away, they were not her brother and her sister yet. Quite true they no longer lived in her house, nor played with her on the green; quite true that now for many a day she had not seen them nor talked with them; quite true they were living now in heaven with One who was so kind to little children when on earth: but, for all this, the wise little girl knew that they had been her brother and her sister once; and she was sure that, wherever they were, her brother and her sister they would be. St. Paul would have said she was right. If you had asked him how many there were in a Christian family, of which five were in this world and two with our blessed Redeemer, he would have said 'Seven.' He would have sided with the little girl who, in reckoning up her brothers and sisters, did not forget the dead ones. It is quite certain that he thought that though the dark stream of death part believers on earth from believers in heaven, it breaks no tie of grace nor of nature. 'The saints on earth and those above, But one communion make, Joined to their Lord in bonds of love, One family we dwell in Him; One church above, beneath, Though now divided by the stream, The narrow stream of death. One army of the living God, To His command we bow; Part of the host have crossed the flood, And part are crossing now.' -From Sunday Afternoons at the Parish Church. STORIES OF INSECT LIFE. THE SILKWORM. 'Nature has poured her bounties forth, N former chapters we have gossiped much of caterpillars and moths, but I have told you nothing of that most valuable little insect of all, the silkworm, which weaves such a glorious tissue of golden beauty in which to enwrap itself during its season of pupahood. Other moths and butterflies may exceed it in the richness and varied colouring of their gossamer wings; but they leave behind them no memorial of their useful ness, and the remembrance of them is as short as their summer's-day life. Do you ever think, my little friends, when you view the lustrous beauty of the satin hangings that adorn the windows of your drawing-room, or look on the pretty silk dress, in which you feel so smart, that you are indebted to a humble worm for all this beauty and luxury? It affords employment to thousands of your fellow-creatures, who attend to its production, and afterwards to the final manufacture of the beautiful materials you see in shops, and purchase at so cheap a price. Its produce is now very largely encouraged in the south of Europe; but it was undoubtedly the Chinese who first made use of the labours of this little worm; and at one time it was a mystery in Europe from what source silk was produced, until two monks purposely travelled to China to investigate the matter, and returned bringing to Italy some of the eggs of the moth, which they concealed in the hollow canes. At one time, silk was valued at its weight in gold at Rome, and we read that the Emperor Aurelian refused his empress a silk dress, on account of its enormous cost! The manufacture of silk was not introduced into England until the fifteenth century. James I. endeavoured to promote the rearing of the worm in our country, but was quite unsuccessful, owing, I suppose, greatly to the unfitness of the climate. He was a great lover of silk himself; and we are told that once, when king of Scotland, having to appear before the English ambassador, he actually begged the loan of a pair of silk stockings from the Earl of Mar! Reeling or winding the silk from the cocoons is performed in the countries where it is produced, and sent to the weavers of our own and other lands in three different states, which are all prepared by the throwster, for the various purposes for which they are intended. I wish I had space to tell you all about the weaving of this delicate material, the ingenuity and labour that is necessary to produce plain silks, and the additional skill required for bringing out figured patterns. Only think that in a piece of silk twenty inches wide, there are often as many as eight thousand separate threads in the breadth, and this will give you some idea of the immense amount of labour that must be expended over even your own silk dress. The weaver is now greatly assisted by machinery, which has facilitated and cheapened to a wonderful degree the production of all those beautiful fabrics in silk and satin. The lustre of the latter is caused by a great proportion of the threads of the warp being left on the surface, and the piece afterwards passed over heated cylinders. I must, however, in this paper confine myself to the production and not the manufacture of silk. The changes which I have described as taking place in the lives of caterpillars, of moths and butterflies, are very similar in that of the silkworm, and the three transformations of larvæ, pupæ, and imago are the same; therefore it only essentially differs from them in the formation of the exquisite golden balls in which it envelopes itself to pass through its second stage. It lives on the leaves of the mulberry tree; but in our own country, where these cannot be procured in abundance, the common lettuce of our gardens has been substituted with great success. The silk, which appears to consist of but one thread, is in fact composed of two, drawn from separate receptacles in the stomach of the insect, and which it unites by means of two little hooks in its mouth. When spinning, the creature scarcely moves the hinder portion of its body, but sways its head in a zig-zag way from side to side, and in this bent position weaves a cocoon much shorter than its body. During the operation, the caterpillar greatly decreases in size, and usually completes its cocoon in about five days, when it gradually changes into the chrysalis. In this torpid state it remains from a fortnight to three weeks, and then working its way out, parting the threads by means of a fluid which it ejects, the imago or moth comes forth to fulfil its destiny, eating no food during |