I do not think the
cocoon can ever be reeled, as the thread usually breaks when it comes
to the open end. I have tried to reel a great many Atlas cocoons, but
always found the process too tedious and troublesome for practical use.
"The Mylitta (Tusser) is a more hardy species than the Atlas, and I have
had no difficulty in domesticating it. Here it feeds on the cashew-nut
tree, on the so-called almond of this country (_Terminalia catappa_),
which is a large tree entirely different from the European almond, and
on many other trees. Most of the trees whose leaves turn red when about
to fall seem to suit it, but it is not confined to these. In the case of
the Atlas moth, I discovered one thing which may be well worth knowing,
and that was, that with cocoons brought to the seaside after the larvae
had been reared in the Central Provinces, in a temperature ten or twelve
degrees colder, the moths emerged in from ten to twenty days after the
formation of the cocoon. The duration of the _pupa_ stage in this, and
probably in other species, therefore, depends upon the temperature in
which the larvae have lived, as well as the degree of heat in which the
cocoons are kept; and in transporting cocoons from India to Europe, I
think it will be found that the moths are less liable to be prematurely
forced out by the heat of the Red Sea when the larvae have been reared in
a warm climate than when they have been reared in a cold one.
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