ESTIMATE OF PROFITS IN RAISING EGGS, ta 
Average number of eggs in an ounce, 40,000, 
Maximum number of cocoons from one ounce of eggs, 40,000. 
One-half of these, or 20,000, are females. 
Number of eggs laid by each female, say, 300. 
Quantity of eggs from one ounce, 6,000,000, or 150 ounces. 
Deducting, as probable loss from all causes combined, one-half, we have 75 ounces. 
Price of eggs in Europe, $2 to $5; say, $3 per ounce. 
Amount realized on 1 ounce, $225. 
On the basis of the first estimates two adults could take charge of the issue from 
4 ounces of eggs. These would yield the sum of $900, and, even after allowing for the 
first cost of eggs, trays, commission, freight (which is light), extra time and labor 
(say another month), and incidental expenses, it leaves a very excellent return. 
In studying the above estimates the reader must bear in mind that 
the silk industry, like all industries, will have its ups and downs—its 
periods of buoyancy and depression. It is just now going through one 
of these last. Silk-culture never was and never will be an exceedingly 
profitable business, but it adds vast wealth to the nations engaged in 
it, for the simple reason that it can be pursued by the humblest and 
poorest, and requires so little outlay.. The question of its establishment 
in the United States is, as I have elsewhere said, ‘a question of adding 
to our own productive resources. There are hundreds of thousands of 
families in the United States to-day who would be most willing to add 
a few dollars to their annual income by giving light and easy employ- 
ment for a few months each year to the more aged, to the young, and 
especially to the women of the family, who may have no otner means of 
profitably empioying their time. 
“This holds especially true of the people of the Southern States, most 
of which are pre-eminently adapted to silk-culture. The girls of the 
farm, who devote a little time each year to the raising of cocoons, may 
not earn as much as their brothers in the field, but they may earn 
something, and that something represents an increase of income, be- 
cause it provides labor to those members of society who at present too 
often have none that is remunerative. Further, the raising of a few 
pounds of cocoons each year does not and need not materially interfere 
with the household and other duties that now engage their time, and it 
is by each household raising a few pounds of cocoons that silk-culture 
must, in the end, be carried on in this as it has always been in other 
countries. Large rearing establishments seldom pay.” 
In what follows there has been no attempt to give a detailed treatise 
on the silk industry. It has been the endeavor rather to convey the 
more important information required for beginners. The few quotations 
are from the writer’s fourth report on the insects of Missouri (1871), and 
it is hoped that, by the aid of a closing glossary of the few unavoidable 
technical terms that are used, the language will be clear to all. 
NATURE OF THE SILK-WORM. 
The silk-worm preper, or that which supplies the ordinary silk of com- 
merce, is the larva of a small moth known to scientifie men as Sericaria 
mori. Itis often popularly characterized as the Mulberry Silk-worm. Its 
place among insects is with the Lepidoptera, or Scaly-winged insects, 
family Bombycide, or Spinners. There are several closely allied species, 
which spin silk of different qualities, none of which, however, unite 
strength and fineness in the same admirable proportions as does that of 
the mulberry species. The latter has, mereover, acquired many useful 
peculiarities during the long centuries of cultivation it has undergone. 
