20 



SILK MANUAL, AND 



SIIiK CTJIiTUUE. 



Much allowance is to be made for the coloring 

 given by enthusiastic men, warmly engaged in a 

 new and untried pursuit ; but after all deduction, 

 facts enough have been presented to show con- 

 clusively that the silk bnsiness is cajjable of being 

 made exceedingly profitable. And {)erhaps the 

 most important fact of all is, that the cnlture has 

 not only maintained its ground, but has been ad- 

 vancing in Connecticut for many years, and that 

 under every disadvantage of imperfect machinery 

 and want of capital, it has brought a far greater 

 amount of money into a small town possessing no 

 great natural advantages, than was ever realized 

 for any one article of produce, from a similar ex- 

 tent of the most fertile bottom lands on the Con- 

 necticut. This culture seems likely too, to thrive 

 more particularly in New England, inasmuchas its 

 success depends more on the industry of the pop- 

 ulation than on the fertility of the territory. In 

 all kinds of produce which can be raised by slave 

 labor, the southern and western planters will 

 always compete with us successfully. Worcester 

 county, the finest agricultural county in New 

 England, cannot profitably raise bread stuflTs 

 enough for its use ; many thousand bushels of 

 Southern corn are annually imported and consum- 

 ed there. The cattle of Franklin county are 

 sometimes competed with in Brighton inarket, by 

 droves which have been pastured on the parks of 

 Kentucky or the prairies of Illinois. It is " the 

 industry of freedom" only, which has enabled New 

 England to maintain her ground against the ad- 

 vantages presented by the superior soil of some 

 parts of the Union, and the cheaper labor of other 

 parts. Every new occupation which free labor 

 can make profitable, and which is safe from the 

 competition of slave labor, is a thousand times 

 more consequence than the discovery of the rich- 

 est gold mine would be. — Franklin Mercury. 



The mulberry, in this particular excels all other 

 trees. — Bost. Mer. Jour. 



American Silk. — The Philadelphia Herald 

 speaks of Mr Upton, of that city as having been 

 for eighteen years engaged in silk manufacture. 

 There is a gentleman in this vicinity, (Mr Cobb of 

 Dedham,) who, for a shorter p(^riod has perha[)S 

 been working as eflfectually as any other person 

 in the way of experiment. He began the culti- 

 vation of the mulberry tree in 1826 ; and since 

 that time, notwithstanding the nature of the soil, 

 which is not the most favorable, has extended his 

 operations so much so as to be now in the habit 

 of bringing to the Boston market American silk, 

 maimfactured, to the amount of &bout a hundred 

 dollars a week, the year round. Recently he has 

 introduced the great improvement of raising his 

 trees from slips, by which he gains two years in 

 the growth. Those planted by him the last spring 

 we understand, have grown over four feet already. 



FERTILIZING PROPERTIES OF lilME. 



A writer for the Genesee Farmer, with the sig- 

 nature " Hakham" gives the following remarks. 



When the writer of this article went, in the 

 days of his boyhood, to reside in one of the south- 

 ern counties of Pennsylvania, the land upon which 

 he lived had been purchased at the common price 

 in the neighborhood, £4 Pennsylvania currency, 

 per acre. A short distance to the northwest lay 

 the great limestone valley, that extends, with some 

 abrupt terminations, from New York to Virginia. 

 The serpentine ridge which bounds this valley on 

 the south-east, was considered by the inhabitants 

 as the limits of the grain country ; and although 

 the land adjoining it south-eastward was a go&d 

 sandy loam, it was thought that it would produce 

 nothing but grass, and the land in the valley was 

 then estimated at an average price of £15, or $40 

 per acre. In a few years, however, the farmers 

 began to haul lime from the valley, and make lib- 

 ei'al applications of it on the land south of .the 

 ridge. They have continued this process with in- 

 creasing industry for forty years, with increasing 

 success, and the consequence has been that the 

 valley, which was thought abundantly calcareous 

 without the application of lime, has remained sta- 

 tionary in value, with some fluctuations during the 

 late vvar, while the land upon which lime has been 

 liberally applied, has advanced from £4 to 80 and 

 $100 per aci-e, and from the abundance of its 

 crops fully justifies the purchasei-. 



TO DESTROY TICKS ON SHEEP. 



Friend Tucker — I have been a constant read- 

 er of thy valuable paper for more than two years, 

 during which time I have noticed several com- 

 nnmications on the best method of destroying 

 ticks on sheep, none of which s^sem to me so well 

 adapted to the end designed as that which 'an ex- 

 p(!rience of sixty years in fiu-ming, has led nie to 

 adopt, and which is now submitted to the public with 

 much difl:idence. I have had for several years a 

 flock of sheep about one hundred in number, com- 

 posed of the Merino and Bakewell breeds, and 

 when purchased by ine the former were much 

 afflicted by " the scab," and all by ticks — the lambs 

 the most severely. For the destruction of the 

 ticks, I procured between one-half and three 

 fourths of a bushel of stems or refuse tobacco, 

 Avhich I boiled, and when the strength was suf- 

 ficiently extracted, the liquor was put into a half 

 hogshead tub, as being the most suitable for the 

 operation intended — to this was added water till 

 the tub was nearly full. After the sheep were , 

 sheared, they were taken and immersed in this de- 

 coction, a board being placed across the tub in 



