The Other Cocons, Which Yield The Best Silk, Are
Managed In A Different Manner.
Before the inclosed worm has time
to penetrate, the silk is reeled off with equal care and
ingenuity.
A handful of the cocons are thrown away into a kettle
of boiling water, which not only kills the animal, but dissolves
the glutinous substance by which the fine filaments of the silk
cohere or stick together, so that they are easily wound off,
without breaking. Six or seven of these small filaments being
joined together are passed over a kind of twisting iron, and
fixed to the wheel, which one girl turns, while another, with her
hands in the boiling water, disentangles the threads, joins them
when they chance to break, and supplies fresh cocons with
admirable dexterity and dispatch. There is a manufacture of this
kind just without one of the gates of Nice, where forty or fifty
of these wheels are worked together, and give employment for some
weeks to double the number of young women. Those who manage the
pods that float in the boiling water must be very alert,
otherwise they will scald their fingers. The smell that comes
from the boiling cocons is extremely offensive. Hard by the
harbour, there is a very curious mill for twisting the silk,
which goes by water. There is in the town of Nice, a well
regulated hospital for poor orphans of both sexes, where above
one hundred of them are employed in dressing, dyeing, spinning,
and weaving the silk.
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