No. 85.] 519 



point, I herewith enclose you a small sample, reeled in my family, _ 

 and saved a large quantity of eggs ; but notwithstanding a large por- 

 tion of the latter were of the small white two crop worm above men- 

 tioned, they did not hatch out a second time — a circumstance for 

 which I am unable to assign any reason, unless it was owing to a 

 long continuance of hot, dry weather, which some writers on the sub- 

 ject say will cause that result. An ice-house having been established 

 at St. Augustine, I, about the middle of July, placed a small quantity 

 of my eggs, assorted, in it, in order to test the fact, whether giving 

 them a temporary winter would cause them to hatch, and being very 

 much pressed with business, paid no further attention to them until 

 about the middle of September, when I took them out and spread 

 them on a shelf in my cocoonery. In a few days they commenced 

 hatching, and we fed them through the months of October and No- 

 vember ; they also were healthy and wound off well. I use no arti- 

 ficial heat, and am satisfied from my own experience that we can al- 

 ways feed here eight months without it, and in favorable seasons nine 

 months, during which time we can make four crops, provided we can 

 manage our eggs so as to have them hatch out when we wish them to 

 do so ; and I see no reason why we may not. I am aware that dif- 

 ferent opinions are entertained on this subject. It is contended by 

 some that retarding the hatching in the manner I have mentioned, 

 must necessarily injure the constitution of the worms. I do not 

 think so. Providence seems in every other respect to have adapted 

 it to the use of man. Its want of locomotion is a remarkable instance 

 of this adaptation ; if it crawled about like other worms we Cduld do 

 nothing with it -, and I believe it is also adapted to that use in the 

 particular I have mentioned — an opinion to which I am led by obser- 

 vation and experience. 



This opinion, I know, is at variance with that of some writers, and 

 amongst them Mr. Gideon B. Smith, of Baltimore, whose opinions on 

 all questions connected with the silk culture are entitled to great 

 weight. He says, that " the silk-worm when left to itself, exposed to 

 the ordinary atmosphere, hatches out in the spring exactly at the time 

 the mulberry leaves grow — that it is therefore " an annual insect," 

 and requires exactly twelve months to pass through all the various 

 stages of its existence." That if, for example, a silk-worm is hatch- 

 ed on the first day of May, 1840, the eggs that it would produce, 

 would naturally hatch on the first day of May, 1841. In this, I think 

 he is mistaken; and with all due deference, there seems to be an in- 

 accuracy between his premises, which are correct, and his conclusions, 

 unless the mulberry leaves come out always at the same period of the 

 year, which is by no means the case in this latitude. I never laid by 

 any eggs from silk-worms that hatched earlier than about the 10th of 

 February, until last year; yet, I have almost every winter had some 

 hatch out whenever the temperature of the atmosphere was as high as 

 70° in the following December and January, which is often the case 

 here : again, in consequence of cool weather at Ihe period of the year 



