488 EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE. 



of his success for its own advantages. It is thus that every 

 where industry is checked and hampered, and enterprise scarcely 

 rises from the ground, but is seen fluttering along upon one 



14. SILK. Silk is another large product in France, giving 

 im humble but honest living to thousands and hundreds of thou 

 sands. Its production is greatly on the increase ; and the last 

 year it nearly doubled itself. 



I know nothing so remarkable, in all its pecuniary and useful 

 results, as the product of this humble insect, the silkworm, 

 whose whole term of being is limited to five weeks. Nothing is 

 to be compared with it in the perfection and beauty of the fabri 

 cations of which it supplies the material and basis. What man. 

 woman, or child s dress, in any civilized community, is not in 

 some measure indebted to the labors of this humble insect : 

 and its bearing in a commercial view is an immense affair. In 

 its pecuniary results, with the exception of the article of bread, 

 few things come in competition with it. 



It is not merely the value of the product as it comes from the 

 insect which gives it importance, but the extraordinary amount 

 of industry and commerce which its humble labors set in 

 motion. In Prance, as in other old and populous countries, 

 every branch of industry is divided and minutely subdivided. 

 There is in the first place the grower of the mulberry-trees, 

 who does not always connect with this pursuit the production 

 of silk ; but the leaves of his trees are sold in the market as any 

 other forage would be. To him succeeds the grower, or, as he 

 is commonly called, the educator of the silk-worms, who hatches, 

 feeds, and manages the worms until their task is completed, and 

 the cocoons are ready for the market. He is succeeded by the 

 filator, or winder, of the silk from the cocoons, who prepares the 

 crude or raw silk for the manufacturer. Here another and nu 

 merous class of operatives is set in motion the spinner, the 

 weaver, the dyer, the pattern-former, the machinist, and the 

 master manufacturer, from whose hands it proceeds next into 

 the hands of the wholesale dealer, and thence into the hands of 

 the retail dealer, to say nothing of the various forms which it 

 afterwards assumes under the agency of modistes, dress-makers, 

 furniture-makers, hat-makers, and the almost countless operations 



