STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 255 



grain farm would bo almost clear gain. Our grain farmers want a 

 variety of products to fill up their idle seasons, and the culture of silk 

 eggs is recommended as one at once pleasing and profitable. The 

 consideration of the other bi'anch of this business — the production of silk 

 proper — I will now call attention to for a moment. 



PROFITS OF SILK CULTURE PROPER. 



The showing made above, of one thousand dollars net profits per acre 

 from two-year-old mulberry trees devoted exclusively to the production 

 of silkworm eggs, together with the certain prospect of a continuous 

 foreign demand for such eggs, to the extent of over nine million dollars 

 per annum from Europe alone, ought to create a sufficient inducement to 

 attract the attention and induce action on the part of the people of our 

 State, to secure that trade and supply the demand. We have all the 

 natural advantages of soil, climate and location necessary to enable us to 

 reap this golden harvest, not only for the present, but for the future, so 

 far as human calculation can penetrate that future. 



In presenting the profits of the production of silk eggs, I would not, 

 however, have any one conclude that the egg business is the only or 

 principal consideration in favor of entering into the occupation of silk 

 culture in California. I look upon the egg trade as only a stepping stone 

 to something better and more substantial, both to individuals engaged in 

 it and to the State at large. I regard it as the immediate source upon 

 which men of limited means can safely rely for an income while pre- 

 paring for the prosecution of the legitimate operations of silk culture 

 proper. When wo have once become fairly engaged in the production 

 of silk, the egg trade will become a secondary consideration. It will no 

 doubt, however, continue as a valuable adjunct to the silk business, and 

 will thus form one of the two reliable sources of profits. 



Of the production of silk as a reliable and remunerative occupation 

 for our people I propose now to speak. I cannot give actual experience 

 in this branch of the business, but will draw conclusions from admitted 

 facts. The climate of California is so favorable for maturing the mul- 

 berry leaves that we are enabled to adopt the Chinese and Japanese 

 mode of cultivating — the same as the English have adopted in their East 

 India possessions, and which is giving them such an advantage over the 

 French and Italians. 



I refer to the system of cultivating the trees as dwarfs and near 

 together, something in the style of cotton plantations. By this system 

 we can produce at each crop at least twice as much foliage per acre as 

 can be produced by the orchard system — which the damp climate of 

 Southern Europe compels the silk growers of those countries to follow. 

 It is found by experience, in France and Italy, that one mulberry tree 

 to the square rod of land is as near as it is advisable toplaut As a con- 

 sequence, but very little can be realized from a mulberry orchard until 

 the trees have attained a good size. It is also found that trees ten years 

 old, thus planted and cultivated, may, without injury, spare one hundred 

 pounds of leaves per year. This would give an average product of six- 

 teen thousand pounds of leaves to each acre of land. Doubling this for 

 our product on the same amount of land, for one crop, and we have thirty- 

 two thousand pounds. As we can take two crops of leaves per annum 

 from our trees, as we cultivate them, without injury, our annual product 

 would be to that of the French, on the same land, as four to one, or 

 sixty-four thousand pounds per acre. Now, one hundred pounds of 



