[Illustration: Fig. 216.--Larva, pupa, cocoon, and moth of Bombyx mori.]
To effect this stifling, the cocoons are exposed to a high temperature. Formerly, in the Cévennes, the cocoons were placed in a baker's oven, heated for baking bread. But they ran the risk thus of being burnt, or of a certain number of chrysalides remaining alive. Now, to kill the chrysalides, they make use of steam at 100°, produced by water boiling in a vessel, and which passes through wicker baskets filled with cocoons.
The rearer must also take care at the time he gathers them, to separate the cocoons which are to provide eggs for the next year. As the female cocoons are heavier than the male cocoons, they are easily separated by weighing them in a pair of scales.
To obtain the eggs, or grain, the cocoons are fixed on sheets of brown paper, covered with a slight coating of paste made of flour. They are arranged in such a manner that the moths shall find no obstacle when they come out of them, head foremost; and, moreover, so that they may be able to reach with their legs the cocoon which is opposite them, so as to hang on to it, and to facilitate their exit from their own cocoon (Fig. 218). The male and female cocoons are pasted on separate sheets.
[Illustration: Fig. 217.--Apparatus for stifling the chrysalides in the cocoons.]
It is from fifteen to twenty days after the _montée_, or _mounting_, and when the temperature of the rooms has been kept between 20° and 25°, that the moths begin to be hatched. As they appear, they are seized by the wings and placed on cloths stretched out for the purpose, where they are left for about an hour, till their wings have fallen flat on their bodies. As soon as they have evacuated a red liquor, the males and females, which up to that time have been apart, are put together.
They then stick sheets of paper on to screens, putting from twenty-five to thirty females on each sheet (Fig. 219). It is here the moths lay their eggs. The sheets of paper, covered with eggs, are then hung on wires, at a small distance from the ceiling of a room having a northern aspect, which is never warmed. They remain thus, exposed to all variations of temperature, till the return of the warm weather. We will say a few words, to bring this subject to an end, on the winding of cocoons and the spinning of silk.