found the boy had never mentioned the matter, and he did not feel bold enough, in his first interview. with the Countess, to do it himself. He knew that he would be rewarded, but he felt sure that a lady would have no idea of the proper sum to pay for a page's ransom. If the pig had not eaten the letter her son had written, she would have been astonished indeed. He would wait, and, when the proper time came, he would let it be known that he expected ransom-money just as much as if he had kept the boy in some secret spot, and had made his mother send the sum required before her son was restored to her. Meanwhile, he was perfectly willing to remain in the service of the good Countess, and the first thing he asked for was a suit of clothes not composed of patches sewn together with bright red silk. And that he received without delay.

Now that Louis was safe at the castle, the minds of the Countess and her friends were occupied with the great question of her safety. It was not to be expected that the officers of the Inquisition would give up their attempts to arrest the lady; and although Barran's castle and Barran's forces might be strong enough to hold her securely and to drive back her persecutors, a contest of this kind with the Church was something not to be desired by the Count nor by his friends. Barran and Lanne were both of opinion that the safest refuge for the Countess would be England; but a secret journey there would be full of hardships, and might compel her to give up all her property, and to be separated from her sons.

It was hard to decide what to do, and at any day the officers of the Inquisition might appear at the gates of the castle.

No, you do not put the eggs to hatch on the mulberry trees. You bring them into a room in the house, or into a shed or stable where it is clean and well ventilated, and spread them out on a newspaper, or on the bottom of a wooden tray made for the purpose. This wooden tray is much like the bottom of a square bird-cage, and you can easily make one.

After you have placed the eggs as directed, heat the room to a temperature of 70 degrees, and in a few hours you will see a change taking place. The eggs grow gray, then blue, then white, with the exception of a small, moon-shaped black spot. Now look at this spot with your magnifying-glass, and you will see it is the head of a worm.

In a few minutes some of these worms will surprise you by the rapidity with which they make their exit from the shell. And when they are out, you will observe, if your magnifying-glass is strong enough, that they are covered with short hairs like a caterpillar, and that they are fastening a little silky web to every object within their reach.

The second day after you put your eggs to hatch, you will find the paper or tray swarming with little, black, wriggling worms. You may judge how small they are when I tell you that the egg is not much larger than a mustard-seed.

They are hungry now, and should be fed, but before doing so, make a frame, similar to a slateframe with a strip through the middle, to fit into the tray. This frame should be covered with mosquito-netting, and placed over the worms. Now gather a few mulberry or osage-orange leaves, chop them fine, like smoking-tobacco, and sprinkle them over the netting.

warmest. This will tend to equalize their growth and prevent the worms being of different sizes when their molting period comes, which occurs four times.

Five or six days after the worms have hatched, they will prepare to shed their skins. This is called a molt.

You will know when this period comes by their loss of appetite. They will become torpid, and look like small bits of rusty iron wire. If now you observe the worms carefully with a glass, you will see a black spot coming in front of the first joint. This is the growth of a new head, and the commencement of the shedding, which process is completed so gradually that a whole discarded skin is rarely found.

In twelve hours this period is over. The worms have passed their "first age," and enter with renewed appetites into their "second age."

This differs but little from the "first age." In it, however, they eat more and grow much larger.

meshes to eat the leaves.

Being so small they will eat very little, but they should be given fresh leaves as soon as the old leaves become hard or dry. When giving them fresh leaves, put over the old frame another frame covered with netting. When the worms have crawled through, remove the first frame with the dried leaves. In this way you can easily change them from old to fresh food. They should be given four meals a day during the "first age.'

The trays must be changed and cleaned at least once a day.

In three days all the strong worms will have hatched; those born after this are apt to be weakly, and had better be thrown away.

Each day those hatched should be removed and placed by themselves, with the date of their birth marked on the tray that contains them. Those first hatched should be placed in the coolest part

room or any other cause, to remove some of them to other trays, lift them with small, flat camel's-hair brushes or large leaves.

When the molt of this "fourth age" is past, the critical period of the silk-worm's existence is over.

FOURTH AGE.

BEFORE MOLTING.

AFTER MOLTING.

In the fifth and last age, how much they will eat! If you have many worms they will keep you pretty busy getting food for them, for not only leaves, but whole mulberry boughs must be given them now. They are as greedy as pigs, and seem to live for nothing but to eat, eat, eat! At this age you can even hear their jaws munching the leaves. But you must not mind this, for they are converting the leaves into a precious fluid, that soon will be poured from their mouths to make the beautiful silken cocoon, and the more they are fed, the firmer and finer will be their cocoons and the more abundant the silk.

them all, for they are then so tender that one pinch or bite will prove fatal.

Now that your worms are ready to spin, you must get ready the spinning-branches. These are bundles of dry twigs from which the leaves have been taken, or bunches of straw. The bunches should be as thick as your wrist, and about a foot long. Stand these bunches all about the trays, and bend their tops together in the shape of an arch.

The worms, as soon as they see the branches, will know what they are intended for, and will lose no time in mounting them. There may be found some who are too lazy to mount. Place some branches in the way of these, and when they have taken hold, stand the branch up. After the worm has mounted the branch, he commences throwing little silky webs from branch to branch. This is a sort of hammock in which he means to hang his Cocoon. By and by he really begins work, moving his head quickly from side to side, and throwing the silken thread in the shape of the figure 8.

If you could properly dissect a silk-worm, you would find in it a reservoir which contains the silk matter. From this reservoir proceed two glands that unite in the mouth. From them a fluid is poured forth which, hardening as it reaches the air, becomes a tiny silken thread, to be conducted and directed by the worm to the points it has selected.

The worm moves its head more than sixty times a minute, or three hundred thousand times in making its cocoon.

For some time after it has been spinning and has wound itself in the threads that have

The worm is now as large as your fin

ger, and of an ashy gray color.

I have not yet told you that black ants are the silk-worms' mortal enemies, and that you will be sure to find them in your cocoonery. I think they are first brought in on the leaves, and you must keep a sharp lookout for them. They pinch and bite the worms until they kill them. If they get to the worms during the "first age," they may kill

bled

FULL-SIZED WORM READY TO SPIN.

Finally the threads grow so thick that the worm is shut out from your view forever, and I am sure by this time you will feel a little tinge of sadness in

saying good-bye, for it has been with you so much, and has been so intelligent, that it seems almost human.

In four days it has expended all its silk fluid, and the cocoon is done. It will contain a thread of silk from six hundred to eight hundred yards long. You must let these cocoons remain on the spinning-branches for about eight days. At the end

A COCOON.

of that time, take them down and carefully strip them of their loose floss. Select the largest and finest, and string them on a thread about a yard long. This is done by passing the needle lightly through the outside of the cocoon floss that still remains on it. Never pass the needle through the cocoon, as it would pierce the chrysalis and kill it. Then hang these threads in a cool, dark room, away from rats or mice.

In about seven days more, you will awake some morning to find holes in your cocoons and a number of butterflies or moths, like those I first told you about, clinging to the walls and cocoons.

Some of these will be males and some females. The males are smaller than the females and keep beating their wings.

After about six hours, place the females on cells.

A cell is a little piece of muslin three by three inches, with a string run through the top. A number of these should be prepared beforehand, and then stretched across the room.

As fast as you separate the moths, place a female on each cell, darken the room and let them alone. In a few hours they will commence to lay. Each moth carefully deposits the eggs (which are covered with a sticky fluid that causes them to adhere to the cloth) side by side, and so on for about three days. The usual number of eggs cach moth lays is four hundred, but they often lay as many as seven hundred.

It will be well to occasionally pin a moth in the corner of a cell, so that the buyer of eggs can reduce it to powder and examine it for disease. Silk-worms have so far been subject to no disease in this country, but occasionally the precaution should be taken of examining a moth. The break

ing out of a disease among the silk-worms is a great affliction on the other side of the ocean.

If you have had one thousand eggs to begin with, and these have produced five hundred females that have laid the average amount of eggs, you will find yourself the possessor of five ounces of eggs, worth at the lowest wholesale price two dollars per ounce, or twenty-five cents a thousand at retail, and about four pounds of pierced cocoons, which, sold as waste, will bring fifty to eighty cents a pound.

If you should want your cocoons for reeling, instead of reproduction, you should take them from the spinning-branches a few days after they are spun, and stifle them.

Stifling is killing the chrysalis inside, so that it can not pierce the cocoon. The pierced cocoon can be carded, but not reeled.

There are many ways of stifling, but solar rays, charcoal fumes, hot air, or steam are the most used. To stifle them by solar rays, they must be put in glass-covered boxes in the sun for several days, care being taken to stir them often.

To stifle them by charcoal, they must be put in

A STRING OF COCOONS.

a bag, hung in a tight box from which the bottom has been removed, and then placed over a pot of burning charcoal. Bank earth about the box, and in twelve hours the work will have been accomplished.

To stifle by hot air, you place them in an oven for half an hour. This is dangerous, for the cocoons are likely to scorch.

To stifle by steam, you put them in a common steamer and steam as you would potatoes or a pudding. Thirty minutes is long enough for them to remain in the steamer.

This last mode is said to be the best of all,

as the steaming softens the gum and improves the luster of the silk.

In all cases, after the cocoons have been stifled, they must be placed on a clean cloth, in a cool, airy room, and allowed to dry for at least ten days. They will mold and discolor if you do not dry them.