SILK-WORMS HELP TO WIN THE WAR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 5 January 1940, Page 8

SILK-WORMS HELP TO WIN THE WAR

j -*U MILLION IN A KENT CASTLE I TO MAKE PARACHUTES fßy Air Mail—Special Correspondent! LONDON. 14th December. The need for thousands of parachutes Cor the Royal Air Force has given a fillip to the English silk-worm industry. At Lullingstone Castle, Kent, where Queen Anne once lived, the raw material produced by 3S million silk-worms is being tested by the Government. Twenty-five out of the 54 rooms in the castle are devoted to some branch of the silk-worm industry. Lady Dart 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 1£ 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 10s 3d to 22s 3d. “Strussa”—the coarse fibre—has risen from Is 6d to 3s 7d. “But we shan’t gain by this,” said Lady Hart Dyke. “Everything else will go up in proportion.”