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in bleaching, in cotton and paper manufactories, has been 

 lately found an antidote to the plague of Cairo in Egypt, 

 when sprinkled daily on the floors. This is one of the 

 most cheap, convenient and powerful agents which can 

 be employed in neutralizing the pernicious effects of 

 mephitic vapors, and rectifying the impure air which 

 arises in hot, damp weather, or from neglect in silk- 

 worm establishments. It is not only the effectual pre- 

 ventive but the all-sufficient remedy for epidemic disease. 

 A spoonful or two may be placed in a broad saucer or 

 plate and covered with five or six times its bulk of water, 

 and replenished every three days. Diseases of silk- 

 worms are few or absolutely none, where things are 

 rightly managed. Count Dandolo was even obliged to 

 have recourse to others for the knowledge of diseases 

 which were unknown in his establishment. Yet when 

 diseases do occur among silk-worms, they appear to 

 arise principally from a damp, stagnant, or mephitic at- 

 mosphere, a want of cleanliness, or improper food, con- 

 sisting of wet leaves, or leaves which have partially un- 

 dergone fermentation. 



By evaporation, as well as by respiration, an incredi- 

 ble quantity of fluid of an unwholesome nature is con- 

 tinually disengaged from the bodies of the insects. Ef- 

 fectual measures should be taken to disperse this source 

 of disease. This unwholesome atmosphere, says Count 

 Dandolo, operates as a continual conspiracy against 

 their health and life; and their capacity of resisting and 

 living through it, proves them to be possessed of very 

 great strength of constitution. It is even affirmed that 

 in high and dry situations, where the temperature is be- 

 tween 68 deg. and 70 deg. and the air preserved in the 

 apartments in a dry and pure state, that disease cannot 

 enter, and the silk-worms will remain as healthy as on 

 their own native trees, and with full feeding the crop 

 will be as abundant. 



