324 [Senate 



Another important question for silk growers, is the best kind of 

 silk-worm. Some are satisfied with the large sulphur kind, envelop- 

 ed with a superabundance of floss ; others prefer the peanut variety, 

 having less floss, less gum, more strength and lustre of fibre, and 

 affording more silk than the other varieties. The superior excellen- 

 cy of the peanut variety, was testified by a silk manufacturer and 

 dyer, before a court holden to take depositions to be used in a suit 

 pending in Nantucket. 



It has been a common remark that silk culture, to be made profita- 

 ble, should be connected with other farming business, and doing up the 

 whole in ?l family way. An instance in point has occurred in this 

 vicinity, where a person says he has and can make more clear profit 

 from his small patch of Canton mulberries than from all the products 

 of his farm. 



But if worms can be fed with better success upon the open Chinese 

 plan, in better ventilated cocooneries or tents, and the one and early 

 crop system be adopted, and if the after foliage and bark of the 

 young mulberry can be appropriated to any new and important use, 

 as it is hoped may be demonstrated another year, then and in that 

 event, the cultivator of the soil may go extensively into the busi- 

 ness, with great safety and profit to himself, and thus contribute to- 

 wards the demand for three hundred millions worth of raw silk, sup- 

 posed to be annually wanted, to supply ourselves and foreign coun- 

 tries. There are silk producing and manufacturing countries, which 

 do not raise enough of the raw material for their own consump- 

 tion. It has been said that the English market requires annually 

 nearly one hundred millions worth of the raw material, and do not, 

 as we understand, raise a pound of it. America must be very indus- 

 trious for some years, to raise even enough for her own market, al- 

 though it has been predicted that we must and can do it, and even 

 more within ten years. To accomplish which, however, will re- 

 quire a great multiplication of trees, not only for feeding worms, 

 but for other important purposes, which have been suggested, and 

 we hope will be accomplished by another year's experiment. With 

 us the demand for silk goods must annually advance, to supply the 

 rapid increase of population. 



In this country, as an exj^eriment, cotton began to be raised at no 

 great distance of time from the present ; for it is within the recollec- 

 tion of many of our inhabitants, when the whole operation was per- 

 formed by manual labor — before Whitney's improvement for sepa- 

 rating ihe seed from the cotton. This machine I saw placed at the 

 head of Long Wharf, in New-Haven, in gonc-by days, while a stu- 

 dent in Yale College, with the cotton between cylinders, to show 

 the operation, and with what facility it could do the business. What 

 Whitney's machine then was to encourage the growth of cotton, our 

 inventions and improvements may be to promote the culture of silk. 

 By uninterrupted perseverance in the culture of cotton, some sixty 

 millions of that article is said to be annually exported, exclusive of 

 the immense quantity manufactured at home for our own and foreign 

 markets ; and why may not the same perseverance in the silk cause 



