248 TRANSACTIONS OP THE 



the successful parties avoided this error. The trees should not be irri- 

 gated within four or five weeks of the time of feeding the worms, 

 otherwise the leaves will become watery, sour and unhealthy food." 



If the worm is so sensitive to the effects of irrigation, is it any wonder 

 that it becomes diseased in countries where a shower or two a day is 

 the rule, and a da}^ free from rain is the exception ? Or is it strange 

 that California should be counted superior for the silk-producing business? 



These experiments have cost me a great deal of anxiety and ti'ouble, 

 days and nights, weeks and months of alternate hope and despair, besides 

 many thousands of dollars; still I give them to the public freely, and 

 believe they are worth to the people all they have cost me, and ten times 

 the amount they would have cost the State, even with a fair and honest 

 fulfilment of the promises which, through her Legislature, she made to 

 induce them, but which have in effect been shamefully and most unfairly 

 repudiated. 



LESSONS DRAWN FROM EXPERIENCE. 



From experiments already made in this State, and particularly from 

 those made the past season, many hints and conclusions may be drawn 

 which will be of immense value to those hereafter engaged in the silk- 

 producing business. I propose to name these conclusions in the order in 

 which they occur to me, and to comment somewhat on the facts which 

 warrant them. 



First — That it is better that the eggs should not be kept back from 

 hatching but very little, if any, past the time they would naturally hatch 

 in a room in the north side of an ordinary house. But if it is desired 

 to keep any back for late feeding, they should be put away in the place 

 it is intended to keep them, in the fall of the year, so that no possible 

 change can take place in them before thus putting them away. They 

 should be subjected to as little change of temperature as possible. 

 Packing them in fine charcoal — that is, surrounding the box containing 

 the eggs with charcoal, say three or four inches in thickness, is believed 

 to be advisable. This precaution will secure them from any dampness, 

 and at the same time tend to give them a uniform temperature, both con- 

 ditions being very necessary to good preservation. Any other non- 

 conductors of heat, such as wool or raw cotton, will do, in case charcoal 

 cannot be handily obtained. 



Second — It is better not to cut the mulberry trees back more than is 

 necessary to keep the foliage within reach of the picker. It is believed 

 that while in ordtoary seasons no perceptible injury might result to 

 worms fed on foliage from ti'eos thus treated, yet in all seasons leaves 

 grown on trees, the tops of which have been cut back short, while the 

 roots are undisturbed, will necessarily be unnaturally rank and vigor- 

 ous, and consequently too great a proportion of water, compared to the 

 glutinous substances, will enter into their composition. The fact that 

 cocoons raised from leaves plucked from cuttings in this vicinity were pro- 

 nounced the best exhibited at the "Paris Exposition," led many of our 

 silk culturists to suppose that in our dry climate there was no danger of 

 inducing this improper composition of the mulberry leaf. A moment's 

 reflection, however, will teach every one that there must necessarily be 

 a great difference in this respect between the composition of the leaves 

 grown on a mulberry cutting, which is a piece of a well matured limb 

 of the tree put into the ground with no roots at all, and the leaves pro- 

 duced on a rapidly growing shoot, forced up from the stump of a tree 

 which retains all the roots necessary to impart a natural vitality and 



