252 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



word " must" comes in, and we may as well understand its full 

 significance at once and make the best of it. 



The experiment of making silk was once tried in our country 

 to a very limited extent, but became involved so soon in so wild 

 a speculation as to bring it into disrepute before it was fairly 

 tested. 



Except fig leaves and the skins of animals, silk is probably the 

 oldest clothing material. Four thousand years ago it was in 

 general use in China, but the period of its first introduction there 

 is not known. The first introduction into Europe, was by a trav- 

 eler concealing a few eggs of the silk worm in a hollow reed 

 which he used as a cane, and bringing them to Constantinople. 

 This was in the sixth century of our era, and previous to that 

 time it was not there known to be the produce of a caterpillar. 

 Silk is cultivated in all parts of China except the extreme north. 

 The export from that country (China) in 1858, was 78,154 bales, 

 or, 9,376,000 lbs. The power of export from that country is 

 indefinite, but would seem to be inexhaustible. The work of 

 feeding the worms and reeling the silk, is performed by the pea- 

 sants. The domestic use of silk in that country (and all classes, 

 even the poorest in some parrs, use it freely,) is chiefly of the 

 Tussah and other wild kinds. These wild kinds, as nearly as I 

 am able to discover by an examination of their plates of butter- 

 flies, are similar to our four varieties of silk worms, producing 

 large cocoons of a very strong fibre, but spun as tow would be, 

 and not so easily reeled by the single thread as the cultivated 

 variety. 



Probably the silk worm lately imported by the Emperor of 

 France, and now cultivated in Algeria to make clothing for his 

 army, is a similar one. Such a worm of immense growth, is now 

 found in the island of Madagascar ; it is fed in the fields on a 

 kind of pea and makes a cocoon of great size. Persian silk is 

 considered poor, but is much used by the natives. That from 

 Asia Minor is excellent. Syria, Cyprus, Crete, Tripoli and 

 the Morea, are great silk growing countries. Poland and Prussia 

 raise some, but inferior. England has tried it, but with littlei 

 success. 



The climate in which the culture of silk is attempted, should 

 be mild, the soil light, with a hilly or even mountainous surface. 

 The report of a French jury on the subject of silk, in 1855, 

 makes the following remark : " Every day shows more and more 



