AN EXPERIMENT IN SILK-CULTURE. 317 



AN EXPERIMENT IN SILK-CULTURE. 



By MAEGAEETTE W. BEOOKS. 



IN an article on silk-culture, published in " Harper's Magazine " 

 more than a quarter of a century ago, the following passage oc- 

 curs : " We shall soon be ready to begin that which the next century 

 will find us doing with all our might commanding the silk as we now 

 do the cotton markets of the world." When we consider how little 

 has been accomplished since that time, it is to be feared that this 

 prophecy will not be realized unless greater advances are made in the 

 next twenty-five years than were made in the last. Repeated trials 

 seem only to show that silk-raising in the United States is not as prof- 

 itable an industry as it was formerly thought to be.' 



The culture of silk is so old that we can not tell when it was 

 begun, or by whom it was first discovered. The Chinese claim that it 

 was known to them as early as 2600 b. c. Almost all Roman and 

 Greek authors mention it, but it was probably unknown in Europe 

 until the sixth century after Christ, and not until the sixteenth cent- 

 ury was it successfully started in France. 



In the year 1714 the manufacture of silk was begun in England. 

 James I tried to establish it in Virginia ; and in Georgia in 1732 lands 

 were granted on condition that on every ten acres of cleared land one 

 hundred white mulberry-trees should be planted, and, on the seal of 

 that State, silk-worms in various stages of their growth were repre- 

 sented. Two or three years later the first export, consisting of eight 

 pounds of raw silk, was sent to England, and the silk manufactured 

 from it was presented to the Queen. In the year 1759 ten thousand 

 pounds were exported, but after the introduction of cotton the culture 

 of silk declined, and the last exportation from Georgia was made in 

 1790. 



In the year 1771 Pennsylvania and New Jersey began the culture 

 of silk, and experiments were also tried in New York and other 

 States. In an old newspaper, under the date of 1786, we read, "Late 

 Philadelphia papers mention, as an extraordinary circumstance, that 

 a family in Maryland have upward of two thousand silk-worms at 

 work." 



The Revolution put an end to silk-raising for a time, but in the 

 early part of this century the culture of silk was again started in a 

 number of States, among others in Louisiana and South Carolina, and 

 even before this one of our New England States Connecticut began 

 the culture of silk. In the year 1790 it was said that fifty families in 

 New Haven were raising silk, and in a newspaper for the year 1787 

 we read that " a young miss in New Haven will soon wear a silk gown 

 of her own make." In the same paragraph the hope is expressed that 



