The rate of oxygen consumption of the silkworm eggs was measured to set up the barometer for measuring the effect of egg chilling on diapause termination. In diapause eggs, $O_2$ uptake showed a maximum of 79.2 ${mu}ell$/mg eggs/hr, at one day after oviposition and then gradually decreased to 2.2${mu}ell$/mg eggs/hr at 9days. The rates of oxygen uptake of eggs raised immediately after HCl-treatment and reached to a maximal level of 484.5 ${mu}ell$/mg eggs/hr in 9-day-old eggs, which corresponds to 220 fold that of diapause eggs, and the hatching ability was also over 50％. In order to break diapause, eggs incubated at $25^{circ}C$ for 30 days after oviposition had to be kept at least for 45 days at 5$^{circ}C$, but chilled eggs for 90 days or longer hatched at 10 days as normal hatching periods. We also investigate periods which the value of $O_2$ uptake of eggs chilled during 15 to 120 days at 5$^{circ}C$ reached at 200 ${mu}ell$/mg eggs/hr. As a result of that, $O_2$ uptake of eggs chilled during 15 to 45days were not reached at 200 ${mu}ell$/mg eggs/hr and longer the chilling durations are, the higher the rate of $O_2$ uptake is and the longer the chilling durations are, the shorter the periods up to hatching is. And also, hatch-ability increased rapidly as $O_2$ uptake reaches over 20/eggs/hr.