After the fourth moult the worms pass into the last age. Five or six days of voracious feeding brings them near that most dramatic event in their lives--the cocoon spinning. For three days, now, instead of eating steadily they wander aimlessly about, as if seeking they know not what; they wag their heads; they behave in an altogether restless and uncertain way. Is it some mortal ailment or mere "weakness of intellect?" You are expecting this and have prepared for it beforehand. They will not need to search long for a place to mount and spin in safety and security their cocoon of shining silvery silk. Farmers' Bulletin, No. 165, recommends the use of small, clean, leafless brush tied together into bundles and fastened between the shelves in rows a foot or so apart. Some use a sort of rack or ladder of narrow strips of wood which should be placed upright on the shelf where the worms can easily find it. They spin between the slats. Any worms which seem not to be ready to spin with the others should be fed until they, too, feel the impulse to travel. As the process of spinning takes some hours, there will be no difficulty in observing it from start to finish. You are entitled to this exhibition, for, without your constant care and feeding, these creatures would not have been able to develop. The dull, inactive silkworm has acquired wonderful agility, and without practice is able to weave himself into his sleeping bag with astonishing celerity, reeling out his twelve hundred or sixteen hundred yards of silk in one continuous thread. There are no knots or kinks in it. It is inaccurate as well as rather silly to refer to the cocoon as a shroud or burial casket, as some do. The creature inside is just as much alive as ever it was. The cocoons with the live pupæ inside are called green cocoons. To prepare them for market they are usually subjected to heat either in the oven or by steaming. No water should touch the cocoons, neither should the oven be hot enough to brown them. After heating they should be dried in the sun or other heat. Open one when you think they may be dry; if they are, the pupæ inside can be rubbed into powder with the fingers. A good price per pound is paid for dried cocoons, but it takes five hundred or more to weigh a pound.