SILKWORMS BUSY
AIR FORCE PARACHUTES The need for thousands of parachutes for the Royal Air Force has given a fillip to the English silkworm industry. At Lullingstone 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 H miles of silk. To breed our worms we keep one in every 20 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 10/3 to 22/3 “Strusa”— the coarse fibre—has risen from 1/6 to 3/7. "But we shall not gain by this,’’ said Lady Hart Dyke. “Everything else will go up in proportion.”
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Bibliographic details
Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 3
Word Count
214SILKWORMS BUSY Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21559, 23 January 1940, Page 3
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