The winding of cocoons is an operation which at first sight appears very simple, but which is in reality a difficult and delicate process. It requires unremitting attention, great experience, and a delicacy of touch which can only be found in the fingers of woman, or rather, in the fingers of certain women. [Illustration: Fig. 219.--Sheets of paper stuck into screens, and inclined for the reception of moths.] The woman who is spinning, stands before a sort of loom which is called _tour_ (Fig. 220). Under her hand is a copper containing water, which she heats to the required degree by opening the tap of a tube, which brings a current of steam. She plunges the cocoons into the hot water, and moves them about in it, to soften the gummy substance which sticks the silken threads of the cocoon together. Then she beats them, with a light hand, with a small birch-broom. The threads of the cocoons get caught in the extremities of the twigs of which the little broom is made, and the workwoman seizes with her fingers the bundle of threads, and shakes them about till she perceives that they are all single, and in a fit state to be joined together. [Illustration: Fig. 220.--Silk-winding Establishment.] Let us suppose that it is wished now to make up a _brin_, or staple, by uniting together the ends of five cocoons. She chooses five ends in the mass, makes of these a bundle, and introduces it into the hole of a _filière_. She makes two staples (_brins_) at once, one on her right, the other on her left hand. She then brings them together, she crosses them, rolls them, and twists them, the one on the other, several times; after which, she separates them from above and keeps them well apart, making each of them pass into a hook at a distance, from which they are going to twist round into a hank, separately, on a wheel. The two threads thus twisted are drawn close together, compressed, and become one, getting round by rolling on each other, and being kept in continual motion, drawn out as they are by the rapid motion of the wheel. The difficulty which the emptying the cocoon of its silk thread presents, makes us understand what difficulties those manufacturers must have met with who have lately attempted to extract from the stalks of mulberry leaves a sort of silk. We will enter into no details of the attempts which have been made to accomplish this object in our time, attempts which have, however, been crowned with no success whatever. We will confine ourselves to reminding the reader that these attempts are far from being of recent origination, since they date back to as far as Olivier de Serres, the father of French sericulture.