144 THE EVOLUTION OF OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



ing also resolved to purchase 2,000 copies for distri- 

 bution in that honorable body ; the author has 

 thought it his duty to enlarge the present edition 

 by giving such further information as he could ob- 

 tain * *." A fourth edition was 

 made in 1839. Other books appeared in various parts 

 of the country. (See pages 155 to 158.) 



The wildest notions of the possibilities of this new 

 silk culture were widespread, and took conservative 

 men off their feet. I shall make an extract from 

 Cobb's Manual in support of this statement ; but 

 before doing so I quote a contemporaneous account of 

 Mr. Cobb's experiments, taken from the Boston "Mer- 

 cantile Journal," to show that this author had really 

 had a successful experience with silk -growing, and was 

 able to speak with authority : "There is a gentleman 

 in this vicinity, (Mr. Cobb, of Dedham,) who, for a 

 shorter period, has perhaps been working as effectively 

 as any other person in the way of experiment. He 

 began the cultivation of the mulberry tree in 1826 ; and 

 since that time, notwithstanding the nature of the soil, 

 which is not the most favorable, has extended his 

 operations so much as to be now in the habit of bring- 

 ing to the Boston market American silk, manufactured, 

 to the amount of about a hundred dollars a week, the 

 year round." Projecting this experience at Dedham 

 across the country at large, Mr. Cobb drew a picture 

 which is vividly like the florid expectations of the first 

 American silk advocates, exactly two centuries before: 



"Now taking the smallest estimate of income, and 

 in what way can a farmer, remote from a seaport. town, 

 acquire so much, with so little capital and labor, in 

 about five weeks' time? If any person will point out 



