1835:] 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



477 



the cocoons and eggs — reeling the silk — all admit 

 of women, boys and girls; the two last at an age 

 when their labor is for most other purposes, utterly 

 inefficient. The reeling process can proceed du- 

 ring the winter months, which is a great consider- 

 ation. That our soil and climate is better adapted 

 to the mulberry than farther north, I think highly 

 probable; and our summer and lull is long enough 

 ibr two crops of cocoons to be raised to equal ad- 

 vantage. The leaf is sufficiently unfolded by the 

 middle of May to begin to feed, and by the 20th 

 of June the first crop will stop feeding, and by 

 the 1st of July the crop of cocoons will be cleared 

 off. While they are being prepared for the fila- 

 tures, the second crop of eggs will be ready to 

 hatch, and the 1st of August, or perhaps the mid- 

 dle would be the best, the second plucking of 

 leaves would commence, so that about the 20th 

 September, all feeding would close. The Chinese 

 mulberry trees, and even my white Italian, have 

 barejy cast the leaf. Now, therefore, no appre- 

 hension could arise upon the score of early frosts, 

 as September gave us tobacco killing frosts, with- 

 out touching these mulberry leaves. I am so 

 much encouraged from my personal observations 

 at the largest cocoonery in the United States, 

 (Mr. Whitmarsh's in Northampton, Massachu- 

 setts,) that I am preparing to go in for an orchard 

 of 15 acres, and accommodations for five millions 

 of worms, which upon the two-crop system, as 

 contemplated, will admit of doubling, and of 

 course, requiring an addition of five or ten more 

 acres to the orchard, in order to have an abundant 

 supply. On getting my establishment in full ope- 

 ration, I count upon giving employment, of a lu- 

 crative character, not only to my own women and 

 young slaves, but to many of the neighboring poor 

 people, and to hire of some of my large slave 

 holding neighbors their negro chaps in leaf-gath- 

 ering time, at a price that will render them better 

 than mere consumers. 



I am happy to find that I shall not grope my 

 way alone in this enterprise, as your correspon- 

 dent Mr. J. B. Gray, over the river above me, 

 says he is going largely into the business. He 

 has the means and youthful energy for the lauda- 

 ble undertaking, and every patriot should bid him 

 "God speed." Eastern Virginia is not a country 

 fit ibr grazing to advantage, in comparison with 

 the western or northern states. And the south has 

 the rich staple of cotton, and the far south, sugar. 

 We must call in new articles, better suited to the 

 country than small grain or grass, and with the 

 culture of silk, madder, broom corn, and wheat, 

 on rich lots, combined with our best staple, Indian 

 corn — the encouragement of home manufacturing 

 establishments, especially such as will afford fe- 

 males and children lucrative employment, I think 

 with these improvements Ihe day would be has- 

 tened greatly, when the tides of emigration would 

 cease to flow, and the Old Dominion begin to raise 

 her venerated head once more. The mother of 

 states must not. become a howling wilderness. 

 The land of the most illustrious of American he- 

 roes, sages and statesmen, should not be cast in 

 the shade. It is not because of negro slavery 

 that she pines, as is ignorantly charged by the fa- 

 natical abolitionist, and even the philanthropic co- 

 lonizationist, but from the causes which I have 

 adverted to in the preceding part of this desultory 

 comnmnication. A bare reference to the annual 



supplies of emigrants, and attendant wealth, all 

 lost to her, will suffice to refute this idea. Let this 

 sluice be shut, and the plan of giving lucrative em- 

 ployment to females and the youths of both sexes, 

 and a lew years will prove the fallacy of this ar- 

 gument against slavery, which is upon the tongue 

 of every whip-stitch politician, and northern and 

 southern abolitionist and colonizationist. 



Before leaving this topic, I must express my 

 thanks to your enlightened and philanthropic cor- 

 respondent, "Polccon," as he subscribes himself) 

 for his able communications touching the low 

 wages of women. I feel a natural sympathy with 

 him, because his mind has been running with 

 mine upon this interesting subject. I trust, his 

 strong pen is not laid aside, and that we shall hear 

 from him again, and that under his own name. 

 Such a writer has no cause to withhold his name 

 from the public, and I am sure his manly and just 

 remarks, upon the trade of tailoring, as engrossed 

 by our sex to the injury of women's prospects, if 

 they gained him the growl of one knight of the 

 thimble, would bring, as a set-off, the grateful 

 smiles of a host of fair seamstresses that are held 

 in subordinate dependence by their ungallant and 

 selfish encroachment upon the proper sphere of 

 woman. I will not shrink from uttering a sugges- 

 tion here, that occurs to my mind, as an additional 

 means of restoring this branch of industry to the 

 sex to which it appropriately belongs, and that is, 

 for the associations your correspondent recom- 

 mends in behalf of female labor, to have an aux- 

 iliary, in resolutions on our part, to give a prefer- 

 ence to female tailors, in all cases, and female as- 

 sociations, to place male tailors in a state of "Co- 

 ventry," in reference to social intercourse, and 

 even the important article of marriage. I wish 

 the worthy fraternity no harm, because I wish 

 them to follow a manly employment, not invasive 

 of female rights and duties. 



I have, you see, wandered away from the pro- 

 mised detail of a few practical results, into this 

 interesting field of mingled observation and spec- 

 ulation, with hardly a spice of practical experience 

 intermingled. I alluded once or twice to marling, 

 which is a favorable theme with you, and I will 

 now proceed to state my observations upon the re- 

 sults of a slight essay at it, made about seven 

 years ago. It was with blue marl, which abounds 

 in this region, with thin layers of shells of various 

 kinds interposed — the blue, where no appearance 

 of shell, retaining the shapes left by them. They 

 have been decomposed, and I think, in the pro- 

 cess, formed sulphur, copperas, plaster of Paris, 

 or gypsum, and perhaps other elements which 

 may be detected by a strict and accurate analy- 

 sis. Certain it is, that the blue marl, as we call it 

 here, is a valuable improver of land. It acts as 

 lime, in rendering the soil more permeable and 

 easier to work, destroying weeds, and causing 

 hen-grass and broomsedge to vanish, to make 

 room for white clover — and if red be sown, to 

 make that thrive astonishingly. Its effects on the 

 two cuts I tried if. on, seem very durable. One 

 was used in the hill with corn, mingled with the 

 earth, about a hoe full to the hill, chopped in, and 

 the corn planted in the mixture. It trebled the 

 product in corn, and the wheat which was ven- 

 tured to be sown, from the fine crop of corn, show- 

 ed double as rank, just as the marl was spread 

 partial!}-, by ploughing in and harrowing. The 



