There is hardly a schoolboy who has not reared in the recesses of his desk some five or six silkworms, feeding them, in default of mulberry leaves, with leaves of lettuce or salsify. Therefore it is hardly necessary to remind my readers how the silkworm is born, grows, and is transformed. Coming out of its egg, which is called a grain, because of its resemblance to a small vegetable seed, the silkworm appears in the first fine days of spring. It does not then weigh more than one or two milligrammes. Little by little its size and its activity augment. The seventh day after its birth it rests on a leaf and appears to sleep. It remains thus for nearly thirty hours. Presently, its head moves, as if it did not belong to the rest of the body, and under the skin of this head appears a second quite new head. Just as if it came out of a case, the silkworm disengages itself from its old withered skin. Here are its front feet, there the false feet (_fausses pattes_), which it carries behind. At length the worm is quite complete. It rests a while and then begins to eat. At the end of a few days new sleep, new skin, new shedding of the skin, then a third, and then a fourth metamorphosis. About eight days after the fourth shedding of its skin, the worm ceases to eat, its body becomes more slender, more transparent; it seeks to leave its litter, it raises its head and appears uneasy. Some twigs of dried heather are then arranged for it to fasten upon; these it climbs, never to descend again. It spins its cocoon and becomes a chrysalis. When the worms of a cultivation have all spun their cocoons, they are smothered in a steam stove, and, after being dried in the sun, they are handed over to the spinners. If it is desired to reserve some of the cocoons for seed, instead of being smothered, they are strung together in chaplets. After about three weeks, the moth comes out of its chrysalis. It pierces the cocoon by means of a liquid which issues from its mouth, and which has the property of so softening the silk that the moth is able to pass through the cocoon. It has hardly dried itself and developed its wings when the males and females pair for several hours. Then the females lay their eggs, of which they can produce from four to six hundred. These are all the phases through which silkworms pass in the space of two months. * * * * *