674 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



they have to live and cultivate their ground. In this business the 

 profits melt away rapidly, and particularly where the mulberry was 

 the only crop, as at Cevennes, misery has taken the place of comfort. 

 Those who once called themselves rich are to-day scarcely able to get 

 food to eat. Those who used to hire day-laborers to gather their har- 

 vest have become day-laborers, and the laborers of former times have 

 emigrated. This will give you an idea of the extremities to which 

 they are reduced, for to uproot a mountaineer of Cevennes he must be 

 dying of hunger. 



To escape a fatality so heavy, these people have displayed perse- 

 verance and courage of the highest kind. They have undertaken dis- 

 tant journeys to get non-infected eggs. More than one has not come 

 back from these journeys, where it was needful to struggle against 

 great fatigue in inhospitable countries. Although they fell not on a 

 field of battle, struck by ball or bullet, they were true soldiers ; and, 

 although they did not carry arms, they died in the service of the 

 country. 



Fig. 18. Fig. 19. 



Square Net. Lozenge-shaped Net. 



NetB used to separate the worms from their faded and withered leaves. Fresh leaves are spread 

 on these nets, and the worms leave the old food to get on to the new leaves. 



During seventeen years this exhaustion has been most aggravated 

 in places chiefly devoted to sericulture. But, if these local sufferings 

 merit all our sympathy, their general consequences still more demand 

 our attention. Confidence in the culture of the silk-worm has dimin- 

 ished wherever it was not the exclusive occupation. Where other 

 crops could replace it, that of the mulberry was easily discouraged. 

 In many countries they have destroyed the tree so lately known as 

 the tree of gold. 



As the foregoing interesting discourse was delivered in 1866, the 

 following statement of Prof. Huxley regarding the pebrine malady, 

 made in lS'TO, in his address before the British Association, will be in- 



teresting. - 



-[Editor. 



