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noun
Silkworm  n.  (Zool.) The larva of any one of numerous species of bombycid moths, which spins a large amount of strong silk in constructing its cocoon before changing to a pupa. Note: The common species (Bombyx mori) feeds on the leaves of the white mulberry tree. It is native of China, but has long been introduced into other countries of Asia and Europe, and is reared on a large scale. In America it is reared only to small extent. The Ailanthus silkworm (Philosamia cynthia) is a much larger species, of considerable importance, which has been introduced into Europe and America from China. The most useful American species is the Polyphemus. See Polyphemus.
Pernyi silkworm, the larva of the Pernyi moth. See Pernyi moth.
Silkworm gut, a substance prepared from the contents of the silk glands of silkworms and used in making lines for angling. See Gut.
Silkworm rot, a disease of silkworms; muscardine.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Silkworm" Quotes from Famous Books



... met with in every village. This is, to appearance, one of the most beautiful raw materials the hand of nature has presented. Its fineness, gloss, and delicate softness render it, to the sight and touch, much superior to the labour of the silkworm; but owing to the shortness and brittleness of the staple it is esteemed unfit for the reel and loom, and is only applied to the unworthy purpose of stuffing pillows and mattresses. Possibly it has not undergone a fair trial in the ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... Since, to describe the nature of some particular place, the form, situation and magnitude of a certain city; to trace the windings of a river to its source, or delineate the aspect of a pleasant mountain; to calculate the fineness of the silkworm's threads, and arrange the gaudy colours of butterflies; in short, to pursue matter through its infinite divisions, and wander in its dark labyrinths, is the employment of the philosophy in vogue. But surely the energies of intellect are more ...
— An Essay on the Beautiful - From the Greek of Plotinus • Plotinus

... sure, Isabel,' chimed in Walter. 'A fellow at my tutor's had it, and did nothing but wind silkworm's silk all the time. We shall have James yet to spend Christmas with us. Everybody laughs at the jaundice, though Fitzjocelyn does look so lugubrious that he had ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge

... not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the empire; the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the sixteenth, century. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the Arabs. The buffalo also and the silkworm belong only to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... a large quantity of silkworm seed, but all failed, save about half an ounce; the commissioners determined at once to erect a filature, which should be a normal school to the whole province, and it was their opinion that it would be "a sufficient nursery to supply, in three or four years, as many reelers ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... was the only university teacher in Avignon to occupy himself with entomology that Pasteur visited him in 1865. The illustrious chemist had been striving to check the plague that was devastating the silkworm nurseries, and as he knew nothing of the subject which he proposed to study, not even understanding the constitution of the cocoon or the evolution of the silkworm, he sought out Fabre in order to obtain from his ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... The mines were entered, the countries pointed out in which they were to be found, the various metals, their value, and the uses to which they were applied. The dress again led them abroad; the cotton hung in pods upon the tree, the silkworm spun its yellow tomb, all the process of manufacture was explained. The loom again was worked by fancy, until the article in comment ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat

... raw silk. Although platinum is the heaviest of the known bodies, a mile of this wire would not weigh more than a grain. Seven ounces of this wire would extend from London to New York. Fine as is the filament produced by the silkworm, that produced by the spider is still more attenuated. A thread of a spider's web, measuring four miles, will weigh very little more than a single grain. Every one is familiar with the fact, that the spider spins a thread, or cord, by which his own weight hangs suspended. It has been ascertained ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 436 - Volume 17, New Series, May 8, 1852 • Various

... a local deity in the guise of a serpent interfered with agricultural operations and could not be placated until a shrine was built in its honour; that in the time of the Emperor Kogyoku, the people of the eastern provinces devoted themselves to the worship of an insect resembling a silkworm, which they regarded as a manifestation of the Kami of the Moon; that the Emperor Keiko (A.D. 71-130) declared a huge tree to be sacred; that in the days of the Empress Suiko (A.D. 593-628), religious rites were performed before cutting down a tree supposed to be an incarnation of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... civilizing work. He wished to restore the prosperity, as well as the provinces, of the empire. During his reign roads, bridges, and aqueducts were repaired, and commerce and agriculture were encouraged. It was at this time that two Christian missionaries brought from China the eggs of the silkworm, and introduced the manufacture of silk in Europe. As a builder Justinian gained special fame. The edifices which he caused to be raised throughout his dominions included massive fortifications on the exposed ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... its mess. The cabbage Pieris consumes the pungent leaves of the Cruciferae as the food of her infancy; the Silkworm disdains any foliage other than that of the mulberry-tree. The Spurge Hawk-moth requires the caustic milk-sap of the tithymals: the Corn-weevil the grain of wheat; the Pea-weevil, the seeds of the Leguminosae; the Balaninus ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... to-night. Your silkworm used to fast every third day, and the next following spins the better. To-morrow at night, I am ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... making neckties, gloves, ribbons, and dresses. Silk cloth is woven from the cocoons made by silkworms. A silkworm is about as big as your largest finger. It grows to this size from the egg in one month. In three or four days it spins a shell of silk thread completely surrounding itself. This shell is called a cocoon. Within this it changes ...
— Health Lessons - Book 1 • Alvin Davison

... remains of a chateau near Montmeyran, the end of the first stage, mark the scene of the victory of Marius over the Ambrons and Teutons, local antiquaries believing that the name of Montmeyran is from Mons Jovis Mariani.[89] The road lies through the bright cool green of wide plantations of the silkworm mulberry,[90] with its trim stem and rounded head; and, in the more open parts of the valley, walnut trees of size and shape fit for an ornamental park in England relieve the monotony. The nearer hills are covered to the top with vines, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne

... Portuguese had made the attempt previous to the arrival of the Dutch, and a strip of land on the banks of the Kalany river near Colombo, still bears the name of Orta Seda, the silk garden. The attempt of the Dutch to introduce the true silkworm, the Bombyx mori, took place under the governorship; of Ryklof Van Goens, who, on handing over the administration to his successor in A.D. 1663, thus apprises him of the initiation of the experiment:—"At Jaffna Palace a trial has been undertaken to feed ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent

... are very costly, it is only a luxury of the rich. The fish shops and stalls are legion, but the fish looks sickening, as it is always cut into slices and covered with blood. The boiled chrysalis of a species of silkworm is exposed for sale as a great delicacy, and so are certain ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... describes a gallery destined to contain the statues of inventors. He does not disdain to place in it not only the inventor of one of the greatest instruments of science, but the discoverer of the use of the silkworm, and of other still more humble contrivances for the comfort of man. What place would Lord Bacon have assigned in such a gallery to the statue of Mr. Watt? Is it too much to say, that, considering the magnitude of the discoveries, the genius and science necessary ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... the company of cold lettuce. Those who insist on the English method of serving it should quote the learned Freeman, who, when confronted with the Continental alternative, complained bitterly that he was not a silkworm! ...
— Birds in the Calendar • Frederick G. Aflalo

... either tree or bush. The only products of Assyria which acquired such note as to be called by its name were its silk and its citron trees. The silk, according to Pliny, was the produce of a large kind of silkworm not found elsewhere. The citron trees obtained a very great celebrity. Not only were they admired for their perpetual fruitage, and their delicious odor; but it was believed that the fruit which they bore was an unfailing remedy against poisons. Numerous ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... mention may be made of the great ailanthus silk-moth (Attacus cynthia) of northern China and Japan, and also of its Manchurian relative A. pernyi; while it may be added that the domesticated "silkworm" (Bombyx mori) is generally believed to be of Chinese origin, although this is not certain. Very characteristic of China is the abundance of handsomely coloured swallow-tailed butterflies of the family ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... never cared for "Cork" but now the hot worried faces of its girls appealed to her. "Let me help. I'm a regular silkworm." ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... by fishermen to tie silkworm gut together. It is easily untied by pulling the two short ends, but it never slips. Lay the two ropes side by side (L, Fig. 67), then make a loop around one rope with the other rope, passing the end under both ropes (M). Bring ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard

... kinds are come upon by travellers bound from Quissac to Le Vigan, that charming little centre of silkworm rearing described by me elsewhere. A few miles from our village lies Ganges, a name for ever famous in the annals of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... they are the first I have seen this season. My beautiful, faithful old friend! Springtime! You have brought her to me this year, though I felt her coming days before! I am so happy—can't you see? I feel as though I'd been a silkworm all winter, coiled up in a cocoon, and had now suddenly grown my wings! And I'm going to fly out over this great green carpet, so sweet with its first perfumes! Don't you feel as I ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... which extended over 13,500 hectares in Vaucluse in 1860, had diminished to eight, representing a loss of millions of francs. The vineyards have also been reduced, owing to the inroads of the phylloxera, although not in equal proportion. Even the silkworm, the third chief source of wealth here, has suffered ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... his shadowy springs Sweet waters shake a trembling sound, There flit the hoot-owl's silent wings, There hath his web the silkworm wound. ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare

... grasshopper or wasp, is caught, the spider, by a dexterous movement, makes it revolve very rapidly, and at the same time emitting a band of threads from its spinners, soon envelops its prey in a case like the cocoon of a silkworm. The spider now examines the powerless victim, and gives the fatal bite on the hinder part of its thorax; then retreating, patiently waits till the poison has taken effect. The virulence of this ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... already in use at this time. The invention of sericulture must therefore have dated from very ancient times in China. It undoubtedly originated in the south of China, and at first not only the threads spun by the silkworm but those made by other caterpillars were also used. The remains of silk fabrics that have been found show already an advanced weaving technique. In addition to silk, various plant fibres, such as hemp, were in ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... is, then, as I feared!—But shall that English silkworm presume to beard me in my father's house, and in the presence of Mary Avenel?—Give me to meet him, spirit—give me to do away the vain distinction of rank on which he refuses me the combat. Place us on equal terms, and gleam the stars with what aspect they will, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... rather more than two and a half million families so engaged, and nearly half a million silk manufacturers. The largest part of the silk exported goes to the United States of America. Closely allied with the production of silk is the mulberry-tree, the leaves of which form the staple food of the silkworm. This plant is cultivated with great care throughout the country, and indeed there are many mulberry farms entirely devoted to the culture of the tree and the conservation ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery

... our work on earth—of necessity, of labour, of love, or of duty,—like the silkworm that spins its little cocoon and dies, we too depart. But, short though our stay in life may be, it is the appointed sphere in which each has to work out the great aim and end of his being to the best of his power; and when that is done, the accidents ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... about the meaning of the piece. But while we find it often used- of the ancestral temple, it may also mean any building, especially one of a large and public character, such as a palace or. mansion; and hence some contend that it should be interpreted here of 'the silkworm house.' We are to conceive of the lady, after, having gathered the materials for sacrificial use, then preparing them according to rule, and while it is yet dark on the morning of the -sacrificial day, going ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... Rochelle, tells of severe medical methods, defends colored people, objects to their treatment by Friends, 39; likes women preachers, criticises uncle for drinking, describes medical practice, 40; criticises reception to Pres. Van Buren and scores him, 41; silkworm culture, remembrances to family, 42; school closes, small wages, school "bully," excursions of olden times, first proposal, studies algebra, can make biscuits also, 43; teaches in Cambridge and Ft. Edward, let. to mother, Whig con., ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... make very long threads, but those of some kinds are so long that they can be woven into silky purses or stockings. The Mussel which makes such long anchor-threads might be called "the silkworm ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith

... about falling down black pits, swinging spider-like, at the end of ropes which I somehow spun by drawing long threads of my brains out of a hole in the back of my head, something after the fashion of a silkworm making a cocoon. ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn

... in this. My vengeance shall fall upon myself, as the person most culpable of all, for I ought to have considered how ill this girl's fifteen years could assort with my threescore and ten. I have been like the silkworm, which builds itself a house in which it must die. I do not reproach you, misguided girl"—here he bent down and kissed his still insensible wife—"for the persuasions of a wicked old woman, and the wheedling tongue of an amorous youth, easily prevail over the little wit of a ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Elves, and flutter round about him, And quite enclose him with your pretty crowd, And touch him lovingly, for that, without him, The silkworm now had spun our dreary shroud;— But he hath all dispersed Death's tearful cloud, And Time's dread effigy scared quite away: Bow to him then, as though to me ye bow'd, And his dear wishes prosper and obey Wherever love and wit can find ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... The silkworm has long been known to be subject to a very fatal and infectious disease called the Muscardine. Audouin transmitted it by inoculation. This disease is entirely due to the development of a fungus, Botrytis Bassiana, in the body of the caterpillar; and its ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... and reel off the cocoons, and afterwards weave a fabric with the thread; and a certain woman of Cos is credited with the invention of this fabric. This is, at first sight, a plain and straightforward description of the silkworm; but we know that it was not till long afterwards, nearly a thousand years after, in Justinian's reign, that the silkworm and the mulberry-tree which is its food were brought out of the East into Byzantine Greece. We learn something of this Coan ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... hundreds of apricot trees in bloom, which presented the appearance of being fire, spurted from the mouth, or russet clouds, rising in the air. Inside this enclosure, stood several thatched cottages. Outside grew, on the other hand, mulberry trees, elms, mallows, and silkworm oaks, whose tender shoots and new twigs, of every hue, were allowed to bend and to intertwine in such a way as to form two rows of green fence. Beyond this fence and below the white mound, was a well, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... Microscope made Easy, says, "A silkworm's web being examined, appeared perfectly smooth and shining, every where equal, and much finer than any thread the best spinster in the world can make, as the smallest twine is finer than the thickest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 381 Saturday, July 18, 1829 • Various

... injurious; that to be certain which is really uncertain; and that to be desirable and good which is undesirable and not good. Alas, why dost thou not awake to a correct apprehension of these? Like a silkworm that ensconces itself in its own cocoon, thou art continually ensconcing thyself in a cocoon made of thy own innumerable acts born of stupefaction and error. Alas, why dost thou not awake to a correct apprehension of thy situation? No need of attaching thyself to things of ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... butterflies, common house and blowing flies, the horse flies, except the goald coloured ear fly, tho in stead of this fly we have a brown coloured fly about the same size which attatches itself to that part of the horse and is equally as troublesome. the silkworm is also found here. a great variety of beatles common to the Atlantic states are found here likewise. except from this order the large cow beatle and the black beatle usually alled the tumble bug which are not found here. the hornet, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... the leaf of the mulberry tree, could be evolved into a slender filament, from which tissues of endless variety and beauty could be made. The Chinese were doubtless among the first who used the thread spun by the silkworm for the purposes of clothing. The manufacture went westward from China to India and Persia, and from thence to Europe. Alexander the Great brought home with him a store of rich silks from Persia Aristotle and Pliny give descriptions of the industrious little worm and its productions. Virgil is ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... war, the telephone is as indispensable, very nearly, as the cannon. This, at least, is the belief of the Japanese, who handled their armies by telephone when they drove back the Russians. Each body of Japanese troops moved forward like a silkworm, leaving behind it a glistening strand of red copper wire. At the decisive battle of Mukden, the silk-worm army, with a million legs, crept against the Russian hosts in a vast crescent, a hundred miles from end to end. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson

... increase of thrush, but also to the development between the specks of thrush of a sort of membrane formed by a peculiar microscopic growth, of whose existence, just as of that of the phylloxera which destroys the vine, or the muscardine which kills the silkworm, we were ignorant till brought to light by recent ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.

... without the senses, as having the seeds of all science and virtue in itself; but not without the service of the senses; by these organs the soul works: she is a perpetual agent, prompt and subtle; but often flexible and erring, entangling herself like a silkworm, but her reason is a weapon with two edges, and cuts through. In her indagations oft-times new scents put her by, and she takes in errors into her by the same conduits she ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson

... varieties of the bread-fruit, the same number of the banana, and twenty-two varieties of the arum, are cultivated by the natives; the mulberry-tree in India and Europe has yielded many varieties serving as food for the silkworm; and in China sixty-three varieties of the bamboo are used for various domestic purposes.[607] These facts alone, and innumerable others could be added, indicate that a change of almost any kind in the conditions of life suffices to cause variability—different ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... Signify (to matter) esti grava. Signify (to make known) sciigi. Silence silento. Silence silentigi. Silence, to keep silentigi. Silent silenta. Silent, to be silenti. Silent, to become silentigxi. Silex siliko. Silhouette profilo. Silk silko. Silkworm silkvermo. Silken silka. Silky silkeca. Sill sojlo. Silliness malsagxeco. Silly naivega. Silver argxento. Silver plate argxenti. Silver-fir pinio. Similar simila. Similarity simileco. Similitude komparajxo. Simile simileco. Simmer boleti. Simper ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... puzzled by the phrase, "silkworm-moth eyebrow," in an old Japanese, or rather Chinese proverb:—The silkworm-moth eyebrow of a woman is the axe that cuts down the wisdom of man. So I went to my friend Niimi, who keeps silkworms, to ask ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn

... like a kind and wronged lover's tear, Or on the pathless waves a rudder's dint, Or like the little sparkles of a flint, Or like to thin round cakes with cost perfum'd, Or fireworks only made to be consum'd: I know that such is man, and all that trust In that weak piece of animated dust. The silkworm droops, the lover's tears soon shed, The ship's way quickly lost, the sparkle dead; The cake burns out in haste, the firework's done, And man as soon as these as ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... army of caterpillars suggested, as things in nature will often do if one takes heed of them, that it might be possible to introduce the culture of the silkworm here, and so substitute a profitable and honest industry for the present curse of this beautiful and otherwise highly favoured place. Silk is almost a staple of Italian industry, and doubtless the mulberry tree would flourish here as in other parts, and with as much success as at ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... comic account of the chasse of this species of gibier. He has a good deal to say about the sardine and tunny fishery, about the fruit and scent traffic, and about the wine industry; and he gives us a graphic sketch of the silkworm culture, which it is interesting to compare with that given by Locke in 1677. He has something to say upon the general agriculture, and more especially upon the olive and oil industry. Some remarks upon the numerous "mummeries" and festas of the inhabitants lead him into a long digression ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... blush at the stare of petulant incredulity, and suffer himself to be driven, by a burst of laughter, from the fortresses of demonstration. The mechanist will be afraid to assert before hardy contradictions the possibility of tearing down bulwarks with a silkworm's thread; and the astronomer of relating the rapidity of light, the distance of the fixt stars, and the height of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various

... speculations of the Hindoo imagination. "Physicists have determined the volume of a molecule, and referring to the numbers that they give, we find that a cube, a millimeter each way (scarcely the volume of a silkworm's egg), would contain a number of molecules at least equal to the cube of 10,000,000—i.e., unity followed by twenty-one zeros. One scientist has calculated that if one had to count them and could separate in thought a million per second, it would ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... those first two or three years; legal fees became larger and more frequent. Within another two years judge Clemens appears to have been in fairly hopeful circumstances again—able at least to invest some money in silkworm culture and lose it, also to buy a piano for Pamela, and to build a modest house on the Hill Street property, which a rich St. Louis cousin, James Clemens, had preserved for him. It was the house which is known today as the "Mark Twain Home."—['This ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... and fancifully derived from Kirman Pers.worms because the silkworm is supposed to have been bred there; but the name is of far older date as we find the Asiatic Aethiopians of Herodotus (iii. 93) lying between the Germanii (Karman) and the Indus. Also Karmania appears in Strabo and Sinus Carmanicus ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... think of something else; she had to find a way to weave the threads into cloth. After many trials, she made a loom—the first that was ever made. She taught others to weave, and soon hundreds of people were making cloth from the threads of the silkworm. ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate

... in a number of domesticated races. In mice there is a quadruple system represented by the gray house mouse, the white bellied, the yellow and the black mouse (fig. 44). In rabbits there is probably a triple system, that includes the albino, the Himalayan, and the black races. In the silkworm moth there have been described four types of larvae, distinguished by different color markings, that form a system of quadruple allelomorphs. In Drosophila there is a quintuple system of factors in the ...
— A Critique of the Theory of Evolution • Thomas Hunt Morgan

... played, and then lost through its darting into a bed of strong weeds and entangling the line, so that the heavy clearing ring sent down towards the hook proved inadequate to the task of releasing it, and the line broke, and the fish escaped with at least a yard of shotted silkworm gut hanging ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn

... a silkworm, you will engage in a very profitable work, which will also place you in a ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... complacency that the vivacity of its wriggles will attract the bite. If the worm could but make the angler respect, or even fear it, the barb would find some other bait. Few anglers would impale an estimable silkworm, and still fewer the anglers who would finger into service a ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of it, he could have woven a chaplet of them and worn it. But the world had reached that height of civilization where the symbol of the glad and living thing was too emotional; always and everywhere we preferred the dead thing, the skin of the seal, the shroud of the silkworm, the straw that was left after the flowers were gone; and Adam was ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... become of them! how humiliated would the vestment be!—It is necessary to confess that one thing alone sustains itself beside a woman's hair. A single fabricator can strive there. This fabricator is an insect,—the modest silkworm." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... silkworm is not exactly in place in a chapter on Novel Live Stock. It is at present not much more than an interesting experiment, but there will be money in silkworm culture as soon as a market for the product ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... to know that the Welsh language can furnish almost unexampled instances of an accumulation of vowels, such as that furnished by the word ieuainc, young men, &c.; but above all by the often-quoted englyn or stanza on the spider or silkworm, which, in its four lines, does ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various

... and gave one look, her mind drank its meaning up, as a moist sponge absorbs water. "What can I do with such a creature as this?" he said to himself. "There is only one way to deal with her, treat her as one treats a silkworm: give it its mulberry leaf, and it will spin its own cocoon. Give her the books, and she will spin her own ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Burley; "we know your motives; it was to send that silkworm—that gilded trinket—that embroidered trifle of a lord, to bear terms of peace ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... silk were very great. But it gives us an index to invention when we hear that Confucius regarded the making of linen, using the fiber of a plant, as a greater feat than utilizing the strands made by the silkworm. Confucius had a sort of tender sentiment toward the moth, similar to the sentiments which our vegetarian friends have toward killing animals for food. Confucius wore linen in preference to silk, for sentimental reasons. The silkworm ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... the offspring at a corresponding age, though sometimes earlier. In many cases this could not be otherwise: thus the inherited peculiarities in the horns of cattle could appear only in {14} the offspring when nearly mature; peculiarities in the silkworm are known to appear at the corresponding caterpillar or cocoon stage. But hereditary diseases and some other facts make me believe that the rule has a wider extension, and that when there is no apparent reason why a peculiarity should appear ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... while this expression of our thoughts seems to us to be a daring, to the others it is a need; they even do not suspect how much they are daring and new. They must, according to the words of a poet, "Spin out the love, as the silkworm spins its web." That is their capital distinction from common mortals; we recognize them by it at once; and that is the reason we put them above the common level. On the pages of their books we find not the traces of the accidental, deeper ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,

... great havoc among her numerous admirers. Lord Byron said that thin women when young reminded him of dried butterflies, when old of spiders. The stage associates of Mile. Guimard called her "L'araignee," and Sophie Arnould christened her "the little silkworm," for the sake of the joke about "la feuille." But such spiteful raillery did not prevent her charming men to her feet whom greater beauties had failed to captivate. Houdon the sculptor molded her foot, and the great painters vied for the privilege of decorating the walls of her hotel. When ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris

... his assistants, under the direction of Tommaso Bonicoli, 1775 to 1791. Like the great works of the great painters, they are executed with the most minute care and truthfulness to nature, whether it be the magnified anatomy of the cuttle-fish or of the silkworm, or the life-like representation of the most delicate organs of the human body. They are contained in twelve rooms, entered from the shell department, by the door lettered ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black

... not exactly in place in a chapter on Novel Live Stock. It is at present not much more than an interesting experiment, but there will be money in silkworm culture as soon as a market for the product is developed. The main difficulty is lack of food, as the worm thrives best on the leaf of the white mulberry tree. Until a substitute is found, it will be necessary therefore to ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... means the returns are abundant. The principal food crop is RICE. Other food crops are wheat, barley, and the soya bean, but these not numerously so. The principal cultivated products for purposes of commerce are the mulberry tree (for supporting the silkworm), the tea plant, the lacquer tree, and the camphor tree. Rice also is grown for export as well as for home consumption, and COTTON is very largely grown for home manufacture. No milk, butter, or cheese is produced, scarcely any meat, no wood, ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... was fifty-nine years old, and a childless widower. Mother and daughter listened, therefore, with devout admiration to all that he told them about his silkworm nurseries. ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... gratitude that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly distinguished themselves in the cause of humanity and America. On the other hand we were not ignorant that the labour and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, were of little moment to herself, but served only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin. We perceived that if we continued our commerce with you, our agreement not to import from Britain must be fruitless. Compelled to behold thousands of our countrymen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little creature writhed and struck, Whistler exclaimed: "Look ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz

... silkworms is first of all to provide something for them to eat. They are very particular about their bill of fare. The leaf of the osage orange will answer, but they like much better the leaf of the white mulberry. Then send to a reliable dealer for a quarter of an ounce of silkworm eggs. That sounds like a small order, but it will bring you nine or ten thousand eggs, ready to become sturdy little silkworms if all goes well with them. Put them on a table with a top of wire netting covered with brown ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan

... the discovery by Pasteur of the means of preventing or curing anthrax, silkworm disease and chicken cholera, a fraction of that great man's life work, added annually to the wealth of France a sum equivalent to the entire indemnity paid by France to Germany ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... VICTOR, an eminent French entomologist; was employed by the French Government to inquire into and report on the diseases of the silkworm, and the insects that destroy ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Cordonnet, had watched and studied the work of the silkworm, and had long thought that there ought to be some simpler process of spinning silk than the tedious and complicated method employed by ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 35, July 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... A silkworm establishment was pointed out to us in the distance, but we did not go over it, as we had seen many before, and it is not the best season of the year. The silkworms are most carefully tended, the people who look after them being obliged to change their clothes before entering the rooms ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey

... my journey in all respects. Only it cost me about 20s., but it was for my health, and I hope will prove so, only I do find by my riding a little swelling to rise just by my anus. I had the same the last time I rode, and then it fell again, and now it is up again about the bigness of the bag of a silkworm, makes me fearful of a rupture. But I will speak to Mr. Hollyard about it, and I am glad to find it now, that I may prevent it before ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... tomes of morality of the purest sort. Even in the later additions to the epic one reads: "Away with gifts; receiving gifts is sinful. The silkworm dies of its wealth" (xii. 330. 29). One should compare, again, the exalted verse (Buddhistic in tone) of ib. 321. 47: "The red garment, the vow of silence, the three-fold staff, the water-pot—these ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins

... cellulose is recovered in a hydrated form. If this yellow solution of cellulose is squirted out of tubes through extremely minute holes into acidulated water, each tiny stream becomes instantly solidified into a silky thread which may be spun and woven like that ejected from the spinneret of the silkworm. The origin of natural silk, if we think about it, rather detracts from the pleasure of wearing it, and if "he who needlessly sets foot upon a worm" is to be avoided as a friend we must hope that the advance of the artificial ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson

... journey, Wauna took me to a number of factories, where the wonderful progress they had made in science continually surprised and delighted me. The spider and the silkworm had yielded their secret to these indefatigable searchers into nature's mysteries. They could spin a thread of gossamer, or of silk from their chemicals, of any width and length, and with a rapidity that was magical. Like everything else of that nature in Mizora, these discoveries ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley

... was not always in his work; of this the inequalities in his music give evidence. In some movements (especially the closing ones) of the sonatas, the subject-matter is often trivial, and the passage-writing commonplace. The silkworm produces its smooth, regular ball of silk without effort, and in like manner Mozart could turn out Allegros, Rondos, sets of variations a discretion. The Sonata in C minor, to our thinking, is the only one in which he was entirely absorbed in his ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock

... husband stopped her mouth. The chief, without vouchsafing her the smallest attention, unfastened the pelisse of grey fox skin, stripped it off, and then proceeded to divest the infant of the first of the coats in which it was enveloped, like a silkworm in its cocoon. But when, after having with some difficulty accomplished this, a third, fourth, and fifth wrapper appeared, he seemed suddenly to lose patience, and drawing his knife, he, with one cut, ripped the whole of the child's clothes from its body, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... mingled with lime and orange trees. The mulberry tree, if not indigenous, was found here at so early a period that it is a matter of doubt as to its having been imported from other lands. It grows to great perfection, and has led to several attempts in the direction of silk-raising, the silkworm also proving more prolific even than in Japan. Some of the fine, hard fancy woods of Cuba were employed in the finish of apartments in the Escurial palace near Madrid. Ebony, rosewood, fustic, lancewood, mahogany, and other choice woods ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... an experiment was made in France of substituting the thread of the spider for the silk of the silkworm: several pairs of stockings and various articles were manufactured with tolerable success in this new material, but the fibre was generally ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... Indian grass was entertaining. I am no angler myself; but inquiring of those that are, what they supposed that part of their tackle to be made of?—they replied, "Of the intestines of a silkworm." ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White

... only, Ming-Y could not avoid discerning the loveliness of her face, the golden purity of her complexion, and the brightness of her long eyes, that sparkled under a pair of brows as daintily curved as the wings of the silkworm butterfly outspread. Ming-Y at once turned his gaze away, and, rising quickly, proceeded on his journey. But so much embarrassed did he feel at the idea of those charming eyes peeping at him through the leaves, that he suffered the money he had been ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn

... organisms to the proper working of the great terraqueous machine, and we shall have as eloquent pleas in defence of the mosquito, and perhaps oven of the tzetze-fly, as Toussenel and Michelet have framed in behalf of the bird. The silkworm, the lac insect, and the bee need no apologist; a gallnut produced by the puncture of a cynips on a Syrian oak is a necessary ingredient in the ink I am writing with, and from my windows I recognize the grain of the kermes ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... just what bonnet the Duchess d'Angouleme is wearing, and how Charles X. in Paris ties his cravat. So the devil always gets a worm in every apple. The French Revolution abolished feudality, titles, great landed property, and only omitted to abolish fashion, and that worm—a silkworm it is—is devastating republican government everywhere, using the women ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend

... and Remak, have almost completely unravelled them, so that the successive stages of development which are exhibited by a Dog, for example, are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silkworm moth to the school-boy. It will be useful to consider with attention the nature and the order of the stages of canine development, as an example of the process in the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley



Words linked to "Silkworm" :   silkworm moth, serictery, sericterium, giant silkworm, giant silkworm moth, Samia cynthia, domestic silkworm moth, silkworm seed, wild wilkworm, ailanthus silkworm, Bombyx, genus Bombyx



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