The female moths, when their partners have been removed, are taken downstairs in newspapers in order to be put into the little tin receptacles where the eggs are to be laid.  On a tray there are spread out a number of egg cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight printed circles on each of them.  On these circles are placed the twenty-eight half-inch-high bottomless enclosures of tin.  Some one takes up a handful of moths and scatters them over the tins.  Some of the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece.  Others are helped into the little enclosures in which, to do them credit, they are only too willing to take up their quarters.  The curious thing is the way in which each moth settles down within her ring.  Indeed from the moment of her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never used her wings to fly.  Nor did the male moth seem to wish to fly.  The sexes concentrate their whole attention on mating.  After that the female thinks of nothing but laying eggs.  Almost immediately after she is placed within her little tin she begins to deposit eggs, and within a few hours the circle of the card is covered.

Food is given neither to the females nor to the males.  Those which are not kept in reserve for possible use on the second day are flung out of doors.  When the female moth has deposited her eggs she also is destroyed.[140] The shoji of the breeding and egg-laying rooms permit only of a diffused light.  The discarded moths are cast out into the brilliant sunshine where they are eaten by poultry or are left to die and serve as manure.

Sericulture is always a risky business.  There is first the risk of a fall in prices.  Just before I reached Japan prices were so low that many people despaired of being able to continue the business, and shortly after I left there was a crisis in the silk trade in which numbers of silk factories failed.  At the time I was last in a silk-worm farmer’s house cocoons were worth from 5 to 6 yen per kwan of 8-1/4 lbs.  From 8 to 10 kwan of cocoons could be expected from a single egg card.  Eggs were considered to be at a high price when they were more than 2 yen per card.  The risks of the farmer are increased when he launches out and buys mulberry leaves to supplement those produced on his own land.  Sometimes the price of leaves is so high that farmers throw away some of their silk-worms.  The risks run by the man who grows mulberries beyond his own leaf requirements on the chance of selling are also considerable.

Beyond the risk of falling prices or of a short mulberry crop there is in sericulture the risk of disease.  One advantage of the system in which the eggs are laid in circles on the cards instead of all over them is that if any disease should be detected the affected areas can be easily cut out with a knife and destroyed.  Disease is so serious a matter that silk-worm breeding, as contrasted with silk-worm raising, is restricted to those who have obtained licences.  The silk-worm breeder is not only licensed.  His silkworms, cocoons and mother moths are all in turn officially examined.  Breeding “seeds” were laid one year by about 33,000,000 odd moths; common “seeds” by about 948,000,000.