Leo Tolstoy Archive
Written: 1898
Source: Translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff
Online Source: RevoltLib.com; 2021
In my garden there were some old mulberry trees. They had been set out long ago by my grandfather.
One autumn I was given a quantity 1 of silkworm eggs, and advised to raise the worms and make silk.
These eggs were dark gray and so small that in my zolotnik I counted five thousand eight hundred and thirty-five of them. They were smaller than the heads of the smallest pins. They were perfectly inert ; only, when they were crushed, they made a crackling sound.
I heaped them up on my table and had forgotten all about them.
But when spring came, I went one day out into my garden and noticed that the mulberry buds were swelling, and were even in leaf where the sun got to them. Then I remembered about my silkworm eggs, and as soon as I went into the house I began to ex- amine them and scatter them over a wider surface.
The larger part of them were no longer of a dark gray as before, but some had turned into a light gray color, while others were still brighter, with milky shades. The next morning I went early to look at the eggs, and saw that the worms had already crept out of some of them, and that others were swollen and filled up. They had evidently become conscious in their shells that their nutriment was ready for them.
The little worms were black and hairy, and so small that it was difficult to see them. I examined them with a magnifying glass, and could see that in the egg they lay curled up in little rings, and when they emerged they straightened themselves out.
I went out into the garden to my mulberry tree, gath- ered three handf uls of leaves, and laid them by them-
1 A zolotnik, equal to two and forty-hundredths drams, one ninety-sixth f the Russian pound, which is nine-tenths of ours.
selves on the table, and went to make a place for them, as I had been told to do.
While I was getting ready the paper, the worms per- ceived the presence of the leaves on the table, and crawled over to them. I moved the leaves away and tried to attract the worms along, and they, just like dogs attracted by a piece of meat, crept in pursuit of the leaves over the table-cloth, across the pencils, pen- knives, and papers.
Then I cut out a sheet of paper and riddled it with holes made with a knife. I spread the leaves on the paper and laid the paper with the leaves over the worms. The worms crept through the holes ; they all mounted on the leaves and immediately set to work feeding.
In the same way I laid a paper covered with leaves over the other worms, and they likewise, as soon as they were hatched, immediately crept through the holes and began to feed.
All the worms on each sheet of paper gathered together and ate the leaves, beginning at the edge. Then, when they had stripped them clean, they began to crawl over the paper in search of new food. Then I would spread over them fresh sheets of perforated paper covered with mulberry leaves, and they would crawl through to the new food.
They lay in my room on a shelf, and when there were no leaves, they would crawl over the shelf, reach- ing the very edge; but they never fell to the floor, although they were blind.
As soon as a worm would come to the abyss, before letting himself down, he would put out of his mouth a little thread and fasten it to the edge, then let himself down, hang suspended, make investigations, and if it pleased him to let himself down, he would let him- self down ; but if he wanted to return, then he would pull himself back by means of his web.
During all the twenty-four hours of the day the worms did nothing else but feed ; and it was necessary to give them mulberry leaves in greater and greater quantities. When fresh leaves were brought, and they were crawling over them, then there would be a rustling sound, like the noise of rain on foliage. This was made by them as they began to eat.
In this way the old worms lived five days. By this time they had grown enormously, and would eat ten times as much as at first.
I knew that on the fifth day it was time for them to roll themselves up, and I was on the watch for this to begin. In the evening of the fifth day one of the old worms stretched himself out on the paper and ceased to eat or to move.
During the next twenty-four hours I watched him for a long time. I knew that the worms shed their skins a number of times, when they have grown so large that their shells are too small for them, and then they put on new ones.
One of my companions took turns with me in watch- ing the process. In the evening he cried :
" Come ; he is beginning to undress ! "
I went over to the shelf, and was just in time to see that this worm had fastened his old shell to the paper and had made a rent near his mouth, was thrusting out his head, and was struggling and twisting so as to get out ; but his old shirt would not let him go.
I looked at him for a long time struggling there and unable to extricate himself, and I felt a desire to help him.
I tried to pick him out by means of my finger-nail, but instantly saw that I had done a foolish thing. A sort of liquid gushed over my finger-nail, and the worm died.
I thought that it was his blood ; but then I saw that the worm had under his skin a watery juice for the pur- pose of facilitating the process of slipping out of the shirt. My finger-nail had evidently disturbed the forma- tion of the new shirt, for the worm, though he was loosened, speedily perished.
I did not touch any of the others, and in the same way they all came out of their shirts. A few of them, however, died ; but all of them, after a long and pain- ful struggle, at last emerged from their old shirts.
After they had molted, the worms began to eat more voraciously than ever, and I had to bring them still more mulberry leaves. In the course of four days they went to sleep again, and again went through the change of skin.
Then they ate still more leaves, and they measured as much as an eighth of a vershok x in length.
Then at the end of six days they again went to sleep, and once more the transformation from old shells into new ones took place, and they began to be very large and fat, and we had really considerable trouble to keep them supplied with leaves.
On the ninth day the old worms entirely ceased to feed, and they went crawling up on the shelf and the supports. I caught some of them and gave them fresh leaves, but they turned their heads away from the leaves and crawled off again.
I then recollected that the silkworms, when they are about to spin their cocoons, 2 absolutely cease to feed, and go to climbing.
I put them back, and began to watch what they would do.
Some of the old ones crawled up on the ceiling, took up positions apart, each by himself, crawled around a little, and then began to fasten a web in various directions.
I watched one in particular. He went into a corner, extended a half-dozen threads at a distance of a vershok from him in every direction ; then he hung himself to them, doubled himself almost in two, like a horseshoe, and began to move his head round and round, and to send out a silken web in such a way that the web began to whip itself around him.
By evening he was, as it were, in a mist of his own weaving. He could be scarcely seen, and on the next day he was entirely invisible in his cocoon. He was entirely enwrapped in silk, and yet he still kept spin- ning. At the end of three days he ceased to spin, and died.
Afterwards I learned how long a thread he had spun in those three days. If the whole cocoon be unwound, it will sometimes give a thread more than a verst 3 in length, and rarely less ; and it is easy to reckon how many times the worm has to turn his head during these three days to spin such a thread ; it will be not less than three hundred thousand times. In other words, he turns his head round without ceasing once every second for seventy-two hours. We noticed also after this labor was finished, when we took a few of the cocoons and cut them open, that the worms were perfectly dry and white as wax.
I was aware that from these cocoons, with their dry, white, wax-like insides, butterflies would come forth ; but as I looked at them, I could not believe it. Still, on the twentieth day, I began to watch what would happen to those that I had left.
I knew that on the twentieth day the change would take place. As yet nothing was to be seen, and I even began to think that there was some mistake about it, when suddenly I noticed that the end of one of the cocoons had grown dark and moist. I was even in- clined to believe that it was spoiled, and was inclined to throw it away.
But then I thought, " May it not be the beginning of the change ? " And so I kept watching it to see what would happen.
And, in fact, from the moist spot something moved. For a long time I could not make out what it was. But then something appeared like a head with feelers.
( The feelers moved. Then I perceived that a leg was thrust through the hole, then another, and the leg was clinging hold and trying to get loose from the cocoon. Something came out farther and farther, and at last I perceived a moist butterfly.
When all its six legs were freed, the tail followed; when it was entirely out, it sat there. When the butter- fly became dry, it was white ; it spread its wings, flew up, circled around, and lighted on the window-pane.
At the end of two days the butterfly laid its eggs on the window-sill, and fastened them together. The eggs were yellowish in color. Twenty-five butterflies laid their eggs : I collected five thousand of them.
The next year I raised still more silkworms, and spun off still more silk.
1 A vershok is 1.75 inch. There are sixteen vershoks in an arshin.
2 In Russian the word kukla means both doll and chrysalis.
3 3500 feet.