STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 257 



each summer. It has been found that worms do better in sheep folds or 

 barns than in any other buildings — the manure proving an advantage, 

 rather than an injury to them. The best way is to begin in a small way 

 and build the business up by degrees, learning as you go along, and 

 making the business pay its way. A few hundred trees will do to start 

 on, and they can be increased as desired. 



LOCATION. 



In selecting a location for the silk business, the climate and soil must 

 be taken into consideration. In regard to climate in California, there 

 is but one thing to be guarded against. So universally is our climate 

 adapted to the business in all its departments, that in all places, from 

 Siskiyou to Los Angeles, where experiments have been made, they 

 have proved successful — far beyond anticipation. The one thing to be 

 shunned is the damp foggy climate of our summers and autumns in the 

 coast counties. In every other locality in the State the climate may be 

 said to be perfect. 



In regard to location, therefore, it is almost impossible to give any 

 definite advice. The silk business should be prosecuted by the farmers 

 in conjunction with other branches of agriculture. The grain farmer 

 should have his vineyard and mulberry plantation, also his sugar beet 

 plantation — the management of which will not interfere with the sowing 

 and harvesting his grain crop. Let every farmer so arrange his prod- 

 ucts that some one of them will give employment at all seasons of 

 the year. His time will then all be employed, and he will enjoy an 

 additional advantage of being pretty sure, if one crop fails, some of the 

 others will succeed — thus insuring him against failure in his year's 

 operations. With such management, agriculture will become certain, 

 successful and profitable. And I am satisfied that silk culture will, in 

 most every part of the State, thus managed, become one of the best 

 and most paying adjuncts of the farm. One consideration in favor of 

 this industry, that does not apply to any other, is this, that the trees will 

 produce a crop of leaves in the dryest of seasons, thus placing the crop 

 at least beyond the danger of the drought. 



SOIL. 



An} 7 soil that will produce a healthy and vigorous growth of the 

 various kinds of fruit trees, and more especially the peach tree, will also 

 produce the mulberry in great perfection. It must be remembered, how- 

 ever, that fruit trees are valued for their fruits and not for their leaves, 

 while the mulberry is valued for its leaves and not its fruit. Hence, it 

 often happens in this State that mulberry trees are most valuable on 

 lands where fruit trees are least valuable. The rich alluvial river bottoms 

 — too rich and too much subject to overflow in the rainy or winter 

 seasons for successful fruit culture — are good lands to be selected for silk 

 culture. Hence in Italy, in the rich plains of Lombardy, and along the 

 banks of the river Po, even within its levees, are found the most produc- 

 tive silk plantations. Lombardy, which has an area of only six thousand 

 square miles — California having one hundred and fifty-five thousand — 

 though one-third of all the arable land is annually in grain, exports 

 annually fifteen million dollars worth of raw silk. An excess of alkali 



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