Eggs deposited in a cocoon after copulation.
It was a strange feeling to realize she had been in a cocoon for weeks.
Before the introduction of machinery applicable to the spinning of silk waste, the refuse from cocoon reeling, and also from silk winding, which is now used in producing spun silk fabrics, hosiery, &c., was nearly all destroyed as being useless, with the exception of that which could be hand-combed and spun by means of the distaff and spinning wheel, a method which is still practised by some of the peasantry in India and other Eastern countries.
As a rule terrestrial spiders guard the cocoon in the permanent burrow, as in the trap-door spiders, or in the silken retreat which acts as a temporary nursery, as in the Salticidae.
The thread so ejected forms the silk of commerce, which as wound in the cocoon consists of filaments seriposited from two separate glands (discovered by an Italian naturalist named Filippi) containing a glutinous or resinous secretion which serves a double purpose, viz.