272 [Senate 



curiosity and benefit, as well as the benefit of the community, if, 

 through our small experiments, they may in any way be benefited. 



Fed this season six thousand worms, sulphur color, IVom white 

 and multicaulis promiscuously — weight 18 lbs. Some sickened and 

 died owing to want of proper ventilation, and crowded too thick on 

 the shelves — fed in a small room with one door and one window — 

 [six hundred [enough for such a room. J. R. B.] — weather warm, 

 door closed, window but few inches raised. One morning found 

 worms sick and vomiting, took up two hundred for dead, placed them 

 on a board in an open wood shed, next day showed signs of recover- 

 ing — ordered them fed — most of them recovered, and made good co- 

 coons almost in the open air. 



Our method of keeping eggs has been to place them in a glass bot- 

 tle, corked tight, and hung up in the cellar ; they have kept in this 

 way to the middle of June without hatching, but for late feeding this 

 method will not answer in cella'-s as warm as ours. Some time in 

 July, when the mercury stood at 83° in an upper room against a 

 plastered wall, I placed the thermometer by the side of the glass bot- 

 tle containing the es:gs, in the cellar, and found the mercury to stand 

 at 73°; examined the eggs, found them hatched and all dead. This 

 prevented our feeding another brood from our late multicaulis. 



We should be glad to receive from you or the convention, at some 

 convenient time, the most approved method of preserving the eggs 

 till midsummer. 



Enclosed 1 send you one dollar as my mite lo help on your efforts 

 to establish the growing of silk in New-England. The multicaulis 

 bubble has burst — the path to perseverance is clear — and Yankee en- 

 terprise will not suffer the silk grower to retrace his steps. 



I esteem Mr. J. W. Gill's communications from Ohio, and Mr. 

 Barbour's letter to Dr. H. Jewett, Dayton, Ohio, as valuable papers. 



Elder David Mitchell, Greenwood Farm, {near Piqua,) Miami 

 Co. J Ohio. — Your circular has just been put into my hand, and I has- 

 ten to lay before you such facts as have come under my observation. 



I have been feeding three years, but on a very limited scale, sim- 

 ply for making experiments. I have fed in my own dwelling-house, 

 in an open stable with a ground floor, and succeeded well in both 

 cases; but the worms arrived at maturity one week sooner w^hen in 

 the house, the apartment being kept much warmer, but the worms 

 were not healthier than in the stable ; they did exceedingly well ex- 

 cept this season. One crop was injured by the children heating the 

 apartment too much. (They did it in kindness towards the worms 

 in my absence.) I had a little fire in the stove to keep the thermo- 

 meter at 64°, but the little urchins raised it to 84° in the space of 

 half an hour, and the consequence was, that they were taken sick, 

 and about half died. I used air-slaked lime profusely once a day, 

 which completely stayed the disease with a part, and I never saw 



