Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 273, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 November 1919 — Fish That Spin Silk. [ARTICLE]

Fish That Spin Silk.

‘ Silk stockings ate very expensive nowadays, says Pearson’s Weekly., The most costly of all this kind of hosiery, however, is made from silk which is not the product of the silkworms, but aspecles of shellfish called a puina. The puina makes its home in the warm waters of the Mediterranean found Sicily. It has an odd little tube at the end of its tongue. Out of this tube, spider fashion, or •ilk-worm fashion, it spins a silk thread with which it fastens Itself to any rock to which it wishes to adhere. When the puina moves on to fresh feeding grounds its silken cable is left behind. This cable, which is called byssus, the Sicilian fishermen gather. Byssus weaves into the softest, finest, sheeniest of fabrics; but it is very rare, and the stockings woven from it consequently are—as has been said—exceedingly expensive. » .