[ 175 3 ^% 



ration, to form a white glossy pasteboard. Handkerchiefs are stik 

 manufactured of it in the intendancy of Oaxaca, 



In the first volume of the Transactions of the American Philoso- 

 phical Society of Philadelphia, is a paper by the late Moses Bartram, 

 of Philadelphia, in which are recorded som.e experiments in propaga- 

 ting caterpillars from cocoons, found on the biack haw, alder, and 

 wild crab tree. He did not attempt to reel silk from either those he 

 found will, or from others wliich were formed in his own house: but 

 subsequent as d recent trials to produce a continuous thread from va- 

 rious native cocooii^, have rep.atedly proved abortive. The Rev. Mr. 

 Pullein, of England, has indeed recorded,** that from the pod of the 

 moth colled '■ isinglass" by Madam Merian, and which lie received 

 from Pennsylvania, he produced a thread of twenty single fibres, 

 which bore a weight of fifteen and a half ounces: while the thread of 

 the common silkworm, of the sam.e size, always broke with fifteen 

 ounces. Mr. Abbot also S'jys. tiiat he had heard of the cocoons of 

 the Bombyx Cecropi;i having been carded, spun, and made into stock- 

 ings, which washed like linen; but that the insect will not bear con- 

 finement. It feeds on the leaves of the cherry tree.t On the outside 

 of the cocoon, the web is coarse; the inside is covered with silk like 

 a silkworm cocoon. 



Miss Rhodes could not succeed in winding any silk from one of the 

 native cocoons, which she received from South Carolina. J 



Madam Humberl§ had some coarse strong silk from cocoons of na- 

 tive wild worms in Louisiana, but, although the cocoons were larger 

 than those of the foreign worms, yet the quantity of silk was less than 

 thnt produced by the latter. For the above reasons it is clear that 

 they are unworthy of attention. 



CHAPTER IV 



OF MULBERRY TREES. 



Botardsts have, hitherto, discovered only one native species of mul- 

 berry tree in North America, viz. ihe red, (7?ionis rubra,) which has 

 an extensive range. Michaux assigns the same limits north to it as 

 to the majestic and beautiful tulip tree, {Hriodendron inlipifera,) viz. 

 the northern extremity of Lake Champlain; but it also grows in Massa- 

 chusetts. Southward and westward, it abounds in all the States, and 

 has been recently found as far west as the lower part of the river 

 Canadian, jj The leaves of the red mulberry tree are large, generally 



* Trans. Royal Soc. Loncl. 1759, p. 54. 



f Tlie natural history of the rarer Lepidopterous insects of Georgia, by Jolin Ab- 

 boU, 2 vols. 4to. Lend. 1797, plate 45. 



4: Anderson's Bee, Edin. vol. 11, p. 173. 



§ Dii Pratt's Hist. Louisiana, p. 187. 



li Found by Dr. James, of the U. S. Army. Annals of flie Lyceum, New York. 

 V.gl. 2d, p. ?46. 



