When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry leaves are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less fine as the silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves adhering to the shoots are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to supply from the very beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots. The caterpillars live in bamboo trays or "beds" on racks. In the house of one farmer I found caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch long occupying fifteen trays. When the silk-worms grew larger they would occupy two hundred trays. The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought adhering to cards about a foot square. There are usually marked on these cards twenty-eight circles about 2 ins. in diameter. Each circle is covered with eggs. The eggs come to be arranged in these convenient circles because, as will be explained later on, the moths have been induced to lay within bottomless round tins placed on the circles on the cards. The eggs are sticky when laid and therefore adhere. In a year 35,000,000 cards, containing about a billion eggs, are produced on some 10,000 egg-raising farms. The eggs--they are called "seed"--are hatched in the spring (end of April--as soon as the first leaves of the mulberry are available--to the middle of May), summer (June and July) and autumn (August and October). It takes from three to seven days--according to temperature--for the "seed" to hatch, and from twenty to thirty-two days--according to temperature--for the silk-worms to reach maturity. Half the hatching is done in spring. In one farmer's house I visited in the spring season I found that he had hatched fifty cards of "seed." From the birth of the caterpillars to the formation of cocoons the casualties must be reckoned at ten per cent. daily. Not more than eighty-five per cent. of the cocoons which are produced are of good quality. The remainder are misshapen or contain dead chrysalises. As there are more than a thousand breeds of silk-worm, all cocoons are not of the same shape and colour. Some are oval; some are shaped like a monkey nut. Most are white but some are yellow and others yellow tinted.