190 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



kg. of cocoons, but after that the amount rose and the cultivation 

 spread pretty steadily till the year 1853, when it reached the 

 maximum yield of 26,000,000 kg. of cocoons. In the period be- 

 tween 1840 and i860 the annual production of raw silk in twenty- 

 eight departments of Southern and Central France is estimated to 

 have been on an average, 40,000 cwt., worth 100,000,000 francs. 

 Then came the devastating silk-worm disease, and reduced the 

 yield in the year 1865, to 34,000,000 francs, and in the Cevennes 

 even to one-twentieth of former harvests. The effect of this dis- 

 ease on the prosperity of the people and the value of land was 

 especially marked here, where, for example in the Departement du 

 Gard, the best raw silk is made, for the strongest links of fine 

 textures, and a Hectare planted with mulberry trees was worth 

 20,000 francs, with a yearly yield of 1,200 francs. 



We must regard the Alps as the northern boundary of successful 

 and important silk culture in Europe. All attempts and efforts on 

 the part of princes, private persons, and associations to extend it 

 over the countries of central Europe have not yet sufficed, in spite 

 of small successes, to secure for it a footing there. There are plenty 

 of old, moss-covered mulberry trees here and there throughout 

 Germany, and mulberry hedges along railway embankments and 

 elsewhere — the marks of these vain endeavours. These experi- 

 ments began in Brandenburg, when the Huguenot immigrants 

 introduced silk-weaving. Frederick the Great encouraged it, and 

 sought to promote silk culture by setting out millions of mulberry 

 trees. In the year 1784 there were 14,000 pounds of raw silk 

 produced in his land — an amount, which has never been reached 

 again in all Germany. Although Germany now possesses a 

 flourishing silk industry, all the raw material, as in the case of 

 Switzerland, England, and North America, is obtained directly or 

 indirectly from abroad, from Italy and the Orient. 



Having taken this short historical and geographical glance at 

 the extension of silk culture, let us return to Japan, to the land 

 whose industry and commercial conditions it is the object of this 

 excursus to illustrate from every point of view, and which, as a 

 silk producer stands second only to China and Italy in importance 

 for our European industry. But before taking up its silk culture 

 in detail, we must, of course, first consider briefly its fundamental 

 elements — the mulberry tree and the silkworm. 



The white mulberry tree {Morns alba, L.) Japan. Kuwa, like the 

 silk-spinner {Boinbyx mori, L.) which feeds upon its leaves, has 

 been divided by a high cultivation into many sub-species. But 

 notwithstanding many assertions to the contrary, it has never yet 

 been discovered in a state of primitive wildness.^ It may be taken 



^ Even good botanists sometimes are in doubt, when they find cultivated 

 plants that have run wild, whether they have not discovered an original home 

 and the pure, natural form of the plant. How much more liable to err, then, is 

 the tyro. Therefore, although Oppert, in his book on Corea, states that the" 



