SILK CULTURE. 915 



mulberry, in particular, grows well from cuttings, and this is perhaps the readiest and most 

 economical method of planting to secure a stock. The cuttings should be started in rows, 

 three or four inches apart, in ground prepared by deep plowing and harrowing. They 

 should be about six inches long, and should be cut just before an eye in every case. They 

 should be almost entirely buried. The quickest way to get a supply of leaves is to grow 

 dwarfs. 



Set out the young trees from the nursery in rows ten to fifteen feet apart, and six to 

 eight feet between the rows, and form the crown of the tree by cutting down to a foot 01 so 

 from the ground. The height of the tree and its form are easily regulated by pruning, and 

 upon this process depends not only the vigorous growth of the tree, but also the ease with 

 which the leaves may be gathered when desired. The pruning may be done in February or 

 March, either every year or every other year. All dead twigs and dried bark should be 

 removed and the limbs kept as smooth as possible, as this greatly facilitates picking. The 

 best time for planting is in the fall, from frost until December, and in the spring, from March 

 until May. For growing standard high trees, a practical raiser gives the folio wing directions: 

 The cutting should remain two years in the nursery without pruning. The third year it 

 is cut down close to the ground and transplanted. The finest shoot is then allowed to grow, 

 and in good land it will reach a height of eight or ten feet in one season. The fourth year 

 it is cut back to six feet or thereabouts. Then, the three or four terminal buds only being 

 allowed to grow, all others are removed as often as they appear by passing the hand along 

 the stem. The Aforetti, a variety of the White Mulberry, is profitably grown in the form of 

 a hedge, and the large size of its leaves makes it a very desirable variety. 



Orange. The cultivation of the Osage Orange (Madura aurantiaca) is so well 

 understood in this country that there is no need of giving detailed instructions on the 

 subject. Very generally used as a hedge plant in those sections of the country which are 

 particularly adapted to silk-culture, its leaves may at once be obtained without any special 

 investment of capital. Those who use this plant as silk-worm food must, however, bear in 

 mind that the shoots from a hedgerow become very vigorous and succulent by the time the 

 worms are in the last age. These more milky and succulent terminal leaves should be thrown 

 aside and not used, as they are apt to induce flaccidity and disease. In avoiding these more 

 tender leaves, and using only the older and firmer ones, especially when the worms are large, 

 consists the whole secret of the successful rearing of silk-worms on this plant; and if care 

 be had in this respect there will be no appreciable difference in the silk crop from Osage 

 Orange as compared with that from Mulberry. Should the worms, from whatever cause, 

 hatch before either Mulberry or Osage Orange leaves can be obtained, they may be quite 

 successfully fed, for a few days, upon well-dried lettuce leaves. It will, however, be worse 

 than a waste of time to attempt to feed them entirely on these leaves, or, in fact, on any 

 other plants than the two here recommended. 



Enemies and Diseases of the Silk Worm, As regards the enemies of the silk- 

 worm but little need be said. It has been generally supposed that no true parasite will 

 attack it, but in China and Japan great numbers of the worms are killed by a disease known 

 as &quot;uji,&quot; which is undoubtedly produced by the larva of some insect parasite. Several 

 diseases of a fungoid or epizootic nature, and several maladies which have not been sufficiently 

 characterized to enable us to determine their nature, are common to this worm. One of 

 these diseases, called mnscardine, has been more or less destructive in Europe for many years. 

 It is of precisely the same nature as the fungus (Empusa muscce), which so frequently kills 

 the common house-fly, and which sheds a halo of spores, readily seen upon the window-pane, 

 around its victim. A worm, about to die of this disease, becomes languid, and the pulsations 

 of the dorsal vessel or heart become insensible. It suddenly dies, and in a few hours becomes 

 stiff, rigid, and discolored; and finally, in about a day, a white powder or efflorescence manifests 

 itself, and soon entirely covers the body, developing most rapidly in a warm, humid 

 atmosphere. No outward signs indicate the first stage of the disease, and, though it attacks 

 worms of all ages, it is by far the most fatal in the fifth or last age or stage, just before the 

 transformation. 



It appears very clear that no remedies are known, but that care in procuring good eggs, 

 care in rearing the worms, good leaves, pure, even-temperatured atmosphere, and cleanliness, 

 are checks to the disease. The drawers and other objects with which the diseased worms 

 may have been in contact should be purified by fumigations of sulphurous acid (S0 2 ), 

 produced by mixing bisulphite of soda with any strong acid, or, better still, by subjecting 

 VOL. II. 50 



