MANUFACTURE OF SILK.

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be inapplicable to any purpose when alone. The thread to bewound on to the wheel, to be made into skeins, is formed offive, six, nine, or more cocconi. Such number of threadsare therefore taken off the birch brush, on to the finger ofthe spinner, who passes them collectively through a smallring of glass, just over the copper and then on to the wheel,which winds it off the cocconi (six for instance), which keepturning and dancing on the water, until nothing is left but thedead chrysalis within. As fast as the spinner perceives thatcertain of the cocconi are all wound off, he quickly throws afresh one or two, or more, to supply the exhaustion, bywhich means the silk wound off is maintained of a uniformthickness. Thus is produced silk in its first stage of manu-factured fibre; in this state it is called raw silk; the fibresfrom the several cocconi composing it are not twistedtogether, but only adhere by means of a gum-resinous sub-stance contained in the silk. For the purposes of manufac-ture, three or more threads of raw silk are twisted together,and then the produce is called organzine silk, that is,machined—“ Organo” signifying, in Italian, a machine, as itreally does in England. We speak of the musical machine inchurches—of organs of digestion, of locomotion, of sight, &c.Vast quantities of raw silk are converted into organzine, or“ thrown ” silk, in the silk-throwing mills of England.

The resinous substance which imparts its yellow colour tothe silk, is sometimes colourless; in this case the cocconiand the silk produced from them, are white, whichenhances the value. This substance and the colour are dis-charged from the silk by means of boilings and bleachings.I have been at the trouble of extracting small masses ofthis yellow resinous colouring substance, from silk, and silk-worms. It is inflammable, bitter to the taste, soluble inalcohol, but very slightly in water. It appears to me asbearing much analogy to that animal production called lac,

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