INTRODUCTION. 



CHINESE MODES OF MANAGEMENT. IMPROVED 

 MODES ADOPTED IN FRANCE. 



ACCORDING to the authority of the Chinese treatises, arid also 

 the high authority of M. Caraille Beauvais, while the French 

 have usually lost near fifty in one hundred of their silk-worms, 

 the Chinese hardly lose one in a hundred. This may, in part, be 

 ascribed to their practice of rejecting in the first instance, and 

 invariably, those few worms that hatch first, and also to the great 

 attention they pay to the insects ; but principally, and most of all, 

 their great success is ascribed to their subsequent treatment of the 

 insects, and particularly to their modes contrived for the purposes 

 of ventilation. By these modes, the exterior air is made to enter 

 the apartment for the silk-worms, by numerous tubes on a line 

 level with the floor. When these tubes are opened, an impure 

 atmosphere is expelled upwards, and escapes through various 

 openings in tho ceiling or roof, and the air of the rooms is cooled 

 and refreshed. When it is desired to elevate the temperature, 

 these openings are closed. When the silk-worms are forming 

 their cocoons, the temperature is always kept elevated. If the 

 warmth of the atmosphere is insufficient, small chafing dishes of 

 coals are occasionally placed beneath two large hurdles, which 

 are united at top and stand inclining. 



At the G-overnment establishment, or experimental silk farm, 

 near Montgeron, in the north of France, M. Camille Beauvais, the 

 superintendent, has adopted, with signal success, the more com- 

 plete system of ventilation and of warming the apartments, in- 

 vented by M. D'Arcet. By this mode, the air of a whole estab- 

 lishment is speedily warmed by means of a furnace in the cellar, 

 the heated air being conveyed beneath by flues, is admitted up- 

 wards to the apartment by numerous openings, which are distri- 

 buted in the floor ; the cold and impure air, being expelled upwards, 

 escapes by numerous openings in the roof. In most of our cities, 

 at this day, many private houses, and a great proportion of the 

 public houses and churches are warmed in this way ; an equal 

 temperature is thus produced in a mode the most perfect and 

 economical hitherto devised. In like manner, as I conceive, a 

 pure, cool and refreshingf atmosphere may also, at any time, bo 



