CHAPTER VI
THE SILKWORM
In my garden there were some old mulberry trees. They had been set out long ago by my grandfather.
One autumn I was given a quantity[1] of silkworm eggs, and advised to raise the worms and make silk.
These eggs were dark gray and so small that in my zolotnik I counted five thousand eight hundred and thirty-five of them. They were smaller than the heads of the smallest pins. They were perfectly inert; only, when they were crushed, they made a crackling sound.
I heaped them up on my table and had forgotten all about them.
But when spring came, I went one day out into my garden and noticed that the mulberry buds were swelling, and were even in leaf where the sun got to them. Then I remembered about my silkworm eggs, and as soon as I went into the house I began to examine them and scatter them over a wider surface.
The larger part of them were no longer of a dark gray as before, but some had turned into a light gray color, while others were still brighter, with milky shades. The next morning I went early to look at the eggs, and saw that the worms had already crept out of some of them, and that others were swollen and filled up. They had evidently become conscious in their shells that their nutriment was ready for them.
The little worms were black and hairy, and so small that it was difficult to see them. I examined them with a magnifying glass, and could see that in the egg they lay curled up in little rings, and when they emerged they straightened themselves out.
I went out into the garden to my mulberry tree, gathered three handfuls of leaves, and laid them by them-
- ↑ A zolotnik, equal to two and forty-hundredths drams, one ninety-sixth of the Russian pound, which is nine-tenths of ours.
