THE SILK WORM. 165 



OTHER KINDS OF FOOD. 



Though it is universally acknowledged that the 

 Mulberry is the food designed by Nature for the 

 worm, attempts have been made to substitute some 

 other kind, which might be produced with more fa- 

 cility than the Mulberry. There are many kinds of 

 leaves upon which the silk-worm will live, among 

 which are lettuce, and the leaves of the hop, hemp, 

 dandelion, rose and fig, and some say the blackberry. 

 The leaves of the currant are also spoken of. But I 

 do not believe these leaves will answer any other pur- 

 pose than to keep the worms alive until the proper 

 food can be obtained, for there is a resinous matter 

 in the leaf of the Mulberry, .which forms the silk. 

 In the Cabinet Cyclopedia will be found a letter 

 from a lady, who says " In the summer of 1785, 1 

 subsisted several thousand worms entirely on lettuce 

 leaves during three weeks, and for the remaining 

 short period of their lives I afforded them their na- 

 tural food. At the end of a month from their hatch- 

 ing they began to spin, and eleven ounces of silk 

 were procured from four thousand cocoons. 55 This 

 lady believed that they could not be fed longer on 

 lettuce than three weeks, for on trial she found that 

 but very few spun at all. 



The same lady informs us, that she fed worms on 

 blackberry leaves, and that they ate the leaves of the 

 elm with great avidity. She also found that they ate 



