The bed was the largest she'd ever seen, with a finely spun silk bedspread of pale yellow.
The former embraces a range of operations peculiar to silk, dealing as they do with continuous fibres of great length, whereas in the spun silk industry the raw materials are treated by methods analogous to those followed in the treatment of other fibres (see Weaving).
It is only floss, injured and unreelable cocoons, the husks of reeled cocoons, and other waste from reeling, with certain wild silks, which are treated by the spun silk process, and the silk thereby produced loses much of the beauty, strength and brilliance which are characteristic of the manufactures from reeled silk.
All cocoons stained by the premature death of the chrysalides (chiques), pierced cocoons, and any from other causes rendered unreelable, are put aside for the spun-silk manufacture.
The English cotton yarn and spun silk counts are reckoned upon the number of hanks of 840 yds.
