SCHOOL IN THE OPEN.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17348, 1 October 1924, Page 10

SCHOOL IN THE OPEN.

: STUDIES IN THE GREAT OUT-OF-DOORS. [ i t i L < k

J. J. S. Comes, 8.A., B.Sc.)

\ (By

The “ Star ” has arranged with Mr .T. J. S. Cornes, 8.A., B.Sc., to write a series of illustrated articles which will give teachers and others a fuller appreciation of the Great Out-of-doors. They will deal with various aspects of plant and animal life, as well as with inanimate nature. Questions and material for identification will be welcomed.

OPENING BUDS. (Continued.) XXX. The bud, then, contains a “baby shoot,” which lengthens into a full branch. Examine this expanding branch. If it be a horse-chestnut branch, or a rose-branch, it contains leaves, and possibly flowers as well. But some buds, for example, peach and apricot, produce flowers only or leaves only. This the blossoming stone-fruit trees in our town sections amply testify ; there is a great mass of pink ffower first, whose fruits set, and whose petals drop, before green leaves emerge. The peach usually has three buds together—two fruit buds and one leaf-bud; the fruit buds are stouter and more rounded than the leaf-buds. In the apple and pear (pip-fruits) some of the buds have leaves only some leaves and flowers. In any case, then, leaves must come along with the flowers here. Cherry, plum, pear and apple fruit buds are borne on ‘“old ” wood of several years' growth, while peach and apricot fruit buds arc on “new” wood of the previous season’s growth. A general fact to be borne in mind when thinking of our early spring flowers is that most of them blossom so soon in virtue of stores previously acquired. It is plain that trees have, on the whole, the start of herbs, because of their perennial stems and branches, which mean not only a great store of potential energy but also the possibility of having ready-made buds in position for unfolding. In some case, such as birch, even flower-buds are made the previous summer. But another, even more frequent, adaptation to early flowering is the possession of an underground store in the form of rhizome, corm, or bulb (a fat underground bud) as we see in the daffodil, hyacinth and snowdrop. THE SILKWORM. “The ideal of the human arts of spinning and weaving, the ideal which we always follow, is a woman’s beautiful hair. We drag ourselves onward, a long, long way in the rear, and enviously regard that supreme perfection which Nature daily realises as a mere matter of pastime. “The infinite effort of human industry has combined all possible means for the improvement of cotton. Alas! all this cannot disguise the original poverty of the ungrateful tissue which men have so richly embellished. If the woman who in her vanity clothes her form in these materials, and thinks her beauty heightened by them, would loosen her tresses about her, and unroll their waves over the indigent richness of our most sheeny cottons, how these would be humiliated ! “Sir, we must own the truth ; there is only one thing worthy to be compared with woman’s bar. Only one manufacturer can contend against it. That manufacturer is an insect, the modest silkworm. “A peculiar charm attends the labour of the silkworm ; it ennobles everything that surrounds it. In traversing out' rudest provinces, the valley of the Ardeehe, where all is rocky—where the mulberry seems to dispense with earth, to live upon air and pebbles —where low stone houses sadden the eyes by their gray tints—everywhere I saw at the door, under a kind of arcade, two or three charming brunettes. with ivory teeth, who smiled on the wayfarer, and continued spinning their silken gold. The wayfarer said to them, in a low voice, as tlie carriage bore him away: ‘What a pity, innocent fairies, that the gold may not be for you ! That instead of being disguised with a useless colour, and disfigured by art, it does not retain its natural hue, and shine on the person of its beautiful spinners! How much better the royal tissue would become you than the ‘ grandes dames.’ ” Jules Michelet “ L’lnsecte.” In China, the home of the silkworms, they live in the open air. There the moth lays her eggs on the branches

comes a fine, shiny silk thread of gol-den-yellow or white colour. The caterpillar fastens this thread to a few thin twigs and starts to build a little house that will shelter it from wind and weather, and in which it can change into pupa without being disturbed by anyone. First it draws the thread this way and that, then it twists it round about itself like a child winding a ball of wool. But it winds the outer thread first, and the inner ones last and all the time it is turning round and round as if dancing a polka. It continues to turn and turn for several days and nights on end, spinning all the time. When it has turned many thousands of times, and spun out all its spinning juice, the little house is so closely woven that not a drop of rain can get through. it pulls off its caterpillar coat; it stuns the crumpled skin into a corner; its body becomes shorter and more oval,

THE BICONCAVE EGGS of the mulberry tree, and ■when the young orphans, the caterpillars, arc hatched, they find the soft, juicy leaves of the mulberry all ready for them to eat. A great many silkworms are reared in Europe, but these live indoprs. Mulberry trees are planted For them, and the eggs are kept during winter, that they may be hatched only in the warm weather when the mulberry trees have young leaves. Then fresh leaves are gathered daily from the trees and are given to the “worms” to eat. If the caterpillars have good food every day, and keep healthy, they grow much bigger. They become as long and fat as a little finger, and thep THE CATERPILLAR, CALLED SILK-WORM.

Note large “spine’’ at tail end. Mulberry to feed these con be obtained at Johnson’s Fish Ponds, Opawa, or at Governor’s Bay. they stop eating to change into a pupa. By this time they have collected much reserve material in their fatty bodies, and so, from a hole in the “ lower lip,’’ they are able to let a plant, if allowed, but .somewhere else of necessity), and, soon after, die All autumn and winter the eggs will stay, waiting for returning warmth ; and sticky juice escape. Directly this comes into the air it stiffens and be-

THE PUPA

Note the shape; words pupa, puppet, and French poupee all mean “little doll.’ 5 The pupa can be obtained alive by steeing the cocoon in warm water and reeling off the silk. If kept in loose bran it will yield up its moth later. it falls asleep, and a gummy exudation hardens over it as its pupa skin. In this silk house, which we call the cocoon, there arc neither floors nor windows, nor any need of them; for the little animal can neither see nor walk about.

THE COCOON

It is of lemon-yellow if the caterpillar has been fed ion lettuce, but golden and of stronger fibre if produced from mulberry. Most butterfly cater pillars do not make such sleeping bags, but hang head downwards, naked, when asleep as pupae, wherein they differ from moth caterpillars.

After a few weeks it slips out of the pupa-skin and cocoon as a silk-worm moth. To do this it has dropped a little alkaline juice on the threads of the house, which makes them dissolve, so that a small door is formed through which the young moth creeps out iracc the open. Rut if the silk thread of the cocoon is to be used the moth cannot be la-

Perhaps through ages of domestira tion, she is very sluggish, and can bo kept in an open boxlowed to escape first, as the threads would thus be broken. So the pupa ;s killed by plunging the cocoon into hot water, after which the delicate thread is reeled off. The thread is dyed many beautiful colours. Vet these coloured silks do not produce any great effect; silk in its natural state, not even tinted, is in much more intimate sympathy with beauty.

THE MALE MOTH

Ho is much more active than the female His abdomen, not having to pr<duce eggs, is much less rounded, bu f . Ins antennae or feelers, which are to intercept “love calls,” perhaps of some “wireless” nature, from the waiting female, are much more feathery and receptive. Feathery, instead of clubbed antennae, are distinctive of moths as compared with butterflies. A genuine mystery attends it Co'oui or gloss? Cotton has its peculiar gloss, and, fitly prepared, acquires an agreeable freshness. Silk is not properly glossly, but luminous, with a soft, e.ectrical light. A living tissue, it embraces willingjy the living person. In New Zealand the silk-worm race persists over winter in the form of the egg. These .are not round, as are r any insect eggs, but flattened, and biconcave (like red blood-corpuscles), and now, when about to hatch, are a darker slate-grev colour. Soon very tiny caterpillars will, come from them, and, until the mulberry-trees have got back their leaves, must be fed on lettuce or sow-thistle, rauraki- About midsummer they will spin their cocoons, their silken sleeping bags, pupate, and shortly emerge. They will pair, the females will lay their eggs (on the host there is danger that you may throw them away as hopeless. A mere glance at the silkworm convinces you that it is no more a native of Europe than any other sweet

thing. All that is soft and exquisite springs from the East. The West, that hardy soldier, blacksmith, miner, is good only to dig. It is good mother Asia, disdained by her rude son, who has bestowed upon him his treasures- — the Arab horse and the nightingale, coffee, sugar and silk. When silk first arrived at Rome, the empresses felt that previously they had been no better than plebeians. They compared it, as far as its soft lustre was concerned, to the pearls of the Orient, paying for it, without haggling, the price of pearls and gold. China esteemed it of such high value that, to preserve the monopoly, she inflicted the penalty of death on any person who dared to export the silkworm, ft was only at the utmost peril, and by concealing the eggs in a hollow cane, that men succeeded in carrying it to Byzantium, whence it passed to the West. Several attempts have been made to establish sericulture in New Zealand Ir. 1863 Mr T. C*. Batchelor, of Nelson, made ail attempt; in 1886-87 Mr Schoch, of Auckland, tried; in 1886. too, the Government distributed 600.000 eggs gratis. Whenever there is a slump in our primary industries the silkworm industry is heard of, and forgotten when the crisis is past. (To be continued on Saturday Next.)