Note 19 — TEXTILE FABRICS

“The mulberry of Valencia is the white, as being most suitable to a well-watered plain. In Granada they give the preference to the black, as thriving well in elevated stations, as more durable, more abundant in leaves, and yielding a much finer and more valuable silk. But then it does not begin bearing till it is about twenty years of age. In this province they reckon that five trees should produce two pounds of silk.

“I had the curiosity to examine their method of feeding the silkworms. These industrious spinners are spread upon wicker shelves, which are placed one above the other, all round, and likewise in the middle of each apartment, so as to leave room only for the good woman to pass with their provisions. In one house I saw the produce of six ounces of seed, and was informed that to every ounce, during their feeding season, they allow sixty arrobas of leaves, valued at two pounds five. Each ounce of seed is supposed to yield ten pounds of silk, at twelve ounces to the pound. March 28th, the worms began to hatch, and May 22nd they went up to spin. On the eleventh day, from the time that they were hatched, they slept; and on the fourteenth, they awoke to eat again, receiving food twice a day till the twenty-second day. Having then slept a second time, without interruption, for three days, they were fed thrice a day; and thus alternately they continued eating eight days and sleeping three, till the forty-seventh day; after which they ate voraciously for ten days, and not being stinted, consumed sometimes from thirty to fifty arrobas in four and twenty hours. They then climbed up into rosemary bushes, fixed for that purpose between the shelves, and began to spin.

“Upon examination, they appear evidently to draw out two threads by the same operation, and to glue these together, covering them with wax. This may be proved by spirit of wine, which will dissolve the wax, and leave the thread. Having exhausted her magazine, the worm changes her form and becomes a nymph, until the seventy-first day from the time that the little animal was hatched, when she comes forth with plumage, and having found her mate, begins to lay her eggs. At the end of six days from this period of existence, having answered the end of their creation, they both lie down and die. This would be the natural progress; but, to preserve the silk, the animal is killed by heat, and the cones being thrown into boiling water, the women and children wind off the silk.”—Townsend; Journey through Spain in the years 1786 and 1787; Vol. III., pp. 264–266.