SILKWORMS BUSY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20142, 11 January 1940, Page 5

SILKWORMS BUSY

AIR FORCE PARACHUTES INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND LONDON. Dec. 14. The need for thousands of parachutes for the Royal Air Force he: given a filfp to the English silkworm industry. At Lullmgstone Castle, Kent, where Queen Anne once lived, the raw material produced by 3.500,000 silkworms is being tested by the Government. Twenty-five out of the 54 rooms In the castle are devoted to some branch of the silkworm industry. Lady Hart Dyke, the chatelaine, maintains a staff of 15 all the year round, spinning the silk. In the season. June and July, during which the silkworms emerge, grow and make their cocoons, the staff rises to 50. Gipsy labour and hop-pickers working before the regular work starts — they arrive at 3.30 to 4 o'clock in the morning—pick the mulberry leaves on which silkworms feed. “We got through 75 tons of mulberry leaves this year,” said Lady Hart Dyke. “Each cocoon contains li miles of silk. To breed our worms we keep one in every 200 cocoons and let them hatch. Every two years I import 100,000 eggs from Marseilles.” The war has sent the price of silk rocketing from !0s 3d to 22s 3d. “Strusa" —the coarse fibre —has risen from Is 6d to 3s 7d. “But we shall not gain by this," said Lady Ilart Dyke. “Everything else will go u~ in proportion."