SILK-Worm

SILK-Worm. This insect consists of 11 rings, and each of these of a great number of other smaller ones, joined to each other; and the head, which terminates these rings, is furnished with two jaws, which work and cut the food, not by a perpendicular but a lateral action. The humours found in the body of this creature, all seem approaching to the nature of the silk which it spins, for on being rubbed in the hands they leave a hard or solid crust behind them. Under the skin there is always found a mucous rosy-coloured membrane, enveloping the animal, and supposed to be the new skin in which it is to appear on throwing off the old one. The heart of this creature reaches from the head to the tail, running the whole length of the body: it is indeed rather a series of many hearts connected together, than one. The motion of systole and diastole is very evident in this whole chain of hearts; and it is an elegant sight to observe the manner of the vital fluids passing from one of them to the other. The stomach of this animal is as long as the heart, reaching, like it, from one end of the body to the other. This large receptacle for food, and the sudden passage of it through the animal, are very good reasons for its great voracity.—In the sides of the belly, all about the ventricle, there are deposited a vast number of vessels which contain the silky juice; these run with various windings and meanders to the mouth, and are so disposed that the creatures can discharge their contents at pleasure at the mouth; and, according to the nature of the juices that they are supplied with, furnish different sorts of silk from them, all the fluid contents of these vessels hardening in the air into that sort of thread that we find the web or balls of this.

this creature consist of. These creatures never are offended at any stench, of whatever kind; but they always feel a southern wind, and an extremely hot air always make them sick.