AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



in all, was reduced in 1865 to less than half this amount. The 

 same year in France, the harvest fell from one hundred million to 

 thirty-four million francs, and from this sum a deduction of ten 

 million francs should be made for the cost of foreign eggs or 

 graines. Where the French graines had cost from four to six 

 francs the ounce, the imported article cost from fifteen to twenty. 

 Under such circumstances the welfare of the silk districts sank 

 rapidly. Large mulberry plantations which before yielded large 

 income, could not find purchasers, as was stated in the French 

 Senate in 1865, by the late celebrated chemist Dumas. Since then 

 the conditions have improved gradually, but to the present time no 

 European country has reached its former grade of silk production. 

 France furnishes now perhaps one-half, and Italy two-thirds of its 

 former yield of the raw material. The country which had the 

 advantage over all others was as has been said before, Japan. 

 To its export of raw silk, which greatly increased in amount and 

 price, was now added the exportation of silkworm-eggs, and their 

 production for foreign markets became an important element in 

 the silk-culture of the land. Every summer a num.ber of strangers, 

 principally Italians, appeared to execute commissions for foreign 

 companies, merchants mainly, who travelled by permission of the 

 Japanese authorities into the silk districts of the interior, purchased 

 what they required of the graines, and returned to Europe, where 

 their speculating principals speedily found a market for them. 

 These '* Bivoltini," as they were humorously named, thus made 

 for themselves a regular business, to the no small vexation of the 

 Italian embassy and the Japanese government, both of which 

 considered their burdensome agency as entirely superfluous, since 

 the purchasing and exporting of eggs might have been carried on 

 quite as well by the regular foreign merchants of Japan. 



The export of silk seeds, ox graines, in boxes, began in i860, but 

 must have been conducted somewhat secretly until 1865, as up to 

 that time an old law existed, forbidding the same under penalty of 

 death. The experiments made in Italy in i860 and 1861 with the 

 Japanese white and green-spinners proved very successful in those 

 years and still later ; nevertheless, a noticeable weakening of the 

 species became evident in the second and third generation. Mean- 

 while the Japanese exports oi graines increased rapidly, amounting 

 in 1863 to 30,000 boxes, in 1864 to 300,000, and in 1865 to 

 2,500,000. This immense sale and enormous profit, which chiefly 

 enriched Japanese merchants, led to cheats and counterfeits of 

 various kinds, not only by the admixture of eggs of an inferior 

 breed, but also of Bivoltini, so that complaints increased. On the 

 other hand, the enlarged exportation was not without disadvan- 

 tage to silk-culture at home, and the government was obliged to 

 seek a remedy. This was found in the control and regulation of 

 production by the government, leaving the export of silk seeds free 

 as before. It was discovered after a while that the eggs of high 



