When the worm has finished spinning, it is one and a quarter inches long. Two days later, by a final molt, its dried-up skin breaks at the nose and is crowded back off the body, revealing the chrysalis, an oval cone one inch in length. It is a light yellow in color, and immediately after molting is soft to the touch. The ten prolegs of the worm have disappeared, the four wings of the future moth are folded over the breast, together with the six legs and two feelers, or antennæ. It soon turns brown, and the skin hardens into a tough shell. Nature provides the cocoon to protect the worm from the elements while it is being transformed into a chrysalis, and thence into the moth. [Illustration: MOTHS EMERGING FROM COCOONS.] With no jaws, and confined within the narrow space of the cocoon, the moth has some difficulty in escaping. After two or three weeks the shell of the chrysalis bursts, and the moth ejects against the end of the cocoon a strongly alkaline liquid which moistens and dissolves the hard, gummy lining. Pushing aside some of the silken threads and breaking others, with crimped and damp wings the moth emerges; and the exit once effected, the wings soon expand and dry. [Illustration: COCOONS FROM WHICH THE MOTHS HAVE EMERGED.] The escape of the moth, however, breaks so many threads that the cocoons are ruined for reeling, and consequently, when ten days old, all those not intended for seed are placed in a steam heater to stifle the chrysalis, and the silk may then be reeled at any future time. The moths are cream white in color. They have no mouths, but do have eyes, which is just the reverse of the case of the worm. From the time it begins to spin until the moth dies, the insect takes no nourishment. The six forward legs of the worm become the legs of the moth. Soon after mating the eggs are laid. The male has broader feelers than the female, is smaller in size, and quite active. The female lays half her eggs, rests a few hours, and then lays the remainder. Her two or three days’ life is spent within a space occupying less than six inches in diameter. One moth lays from three to four hundred eggs, depositing them over an even surface. In some species a gummy liquid sticks the eggs to the object upon which they are laid. In the large cocoon varieties there are full thirty thousand eggs in a single ounce avoirdupois. It takes from twenty-five hundred to three thousand cocoons to make a pound of reeled silk. Do you wonder that, centuries ago, silk was valued at its weight in gold? Growers of silk in the United States, by working early and late every day during the season, which lasts from six to eight weeks, could scarcely average fifteen cents for a day’s labor of ten hours. Silk, once regarded as a luxury, is now considered a necessity. [Illustration: HOW THE COCOON IS UNWOUND REELING THE SILK FROM COCOONS BY FOOT POWER, CALLED “RE-REEL” SILK.