ISO 



g^ r L K M AN UA L , AND 



with inveterate habits, call in question judgment 

 anciently acquired, and raise up against themselves 

 prejudices supported by the sanction of time ; a 

 conflict of opinion may then arise, during wliich 

 human judgment Avill long combat with natural 

 facts ; and truth, on whichever side it may be 

 found, will sometimes he slow to triumph. 



It is, gentlemen, a spectacle of this kind that a 

 skilful cultivator presents before you to-day ; one 

 who some years since, established himself near 

 Paris, upon an indifferent and forbidding soil, and 

 destitute of water. It might be said that this 

 individual had only wished to gain a foothold upon 

 our territory ; that calculating in advance, but little 

 from the profits of the ])lough, he sought only a 

 small spot upon which he might realize the trea- 

 sure which then existed only in his mind. 

 ~~ That treasure which M. Beauvais now exhibits 

 before you, was at first, in fact, but an abstract 

 idea, which he would have presented in this form : 

 "To establish his own fortune, and the advance- 

 ment of the public good, by a truly ))rofitablo 

 method of management of the culture of silk in 

 the centre and the north of France." 



After long experiments, he believes, at last, to 

 have caused to sj ring up from his arid soil, a new 

 source of public and private wealth, and far from 

 wishing to keep the enjoyment of it exclusively to 

 himself, he invites us all to draw from the san)e 

 som'ce, which would be inexhaustible, in fact, if 

 his zeal for the public good has not greatly led 

 him astray. 



M. Beauvais belongs to the South ; it was easy 

 for him to have fixed his establishment there, and 

 to have conducted it upon the principles wliich 

 "were already fiimiliar to him ; he was aware of 

 the efl'orts which had been vainly attempted in 

 preceding ages to cultivate silk worms in the 

 North. Everything attracted him to one side — 

 everything repelled him from the other ; but he 

 said to himself: " Every branch of industry is on 

 the advance. Why should that of the culture of 

 silk remain forever nearly in the state it was when 

 it passed from Italy into France? The sciences 

 of natural philosophy and chemistry, whose recent 

 discoveries may be considered as new, and of 

 which it may invoke the aid, hardly then existed 

 for the cultivator of the fiekl. Must then this 

 branch of industry remain irrevocably confined to 

 its ancient cradle ? Its losses, which have been 

 sometimes so discouraging, ought they to be rather 

 .attributed to the constitution of the precious insect 

 TivKvich is the basis of it, than to the impurity of 

 the places in which it is confined, and to the 

 variations of the atmosphere which ])ress so 

 heavily on a life at once so full and so short .^ 

 They will not be attributed to the North, where 

 at the present time the raising of silk worms is 

 not pursued, when they so cruelly afflict that 



ha];py climate of the South, reputed to be exclu^- 

 sivelj' j)roj)itious to them. ^Vherevcr the mul- 

 berry grows and j'rospers, the worm which sjjins 

 its leaf must be able to grow and ]iros[)er also. 

 Let us not always despise the providential relations 

 of beings! Why could 1 not create, under the 

 shelter where tliat worm accomplishes his destiny, 

 an isolated climate free from all local influence.^ 

 I could even more easily guai-d it against the less 

 pernicious efiects of the North, than against the 

 capricious temperatures of the South. But what 

 do I say ? it will no longer be a question of North 

 or South ; for I already see that it will be possible 

 so to control anrl to combine in their narrow asy- 

 lum fire and water, those two promoters of all 

 organic action, and to imitate for them even those 

 winfis which sustain abroad the salubrity of the 

 air, and dissipate afar the deleterious miasma." 



I have put these words into the mouth of M. 

 Beauvais, not, g-entlemen, to add a value to his 

 cause here, but because they in fact express what 

 dee[) and intense thought has presided in his es- 

 tablishment, and reca|)itn'ate the principles upon 

 which a!l his labors have been based. It lias been 

 at his own ex[)ense, at his own risk, that duriivg 

 nearly seven years, under the influence of his own 

 convictions he has put these principles into prac- 

 tice, with constantly increasing results, without 

 permitting himself to be discouraged by some mis- 

 takes which he has candidly acknowledged, and 

 without being intimidated by the uneasiness of his 

 friends, and by the doubts wi^ich he saw arise, 

 like clouds, ready to obscure the brilliancy of his 

 first successes, and perhajs to annihilate his most 

 cherished hopes. 



It would be sni'erfluous to enter here into the 

 general details of culture or of agricultural opera- 

 tions, wliich every friend of agriculture is admit- 

 ted, is invited, to observe in the establishment of 

 the Bergeries. They have been elsewhere de- 

 scribed, and that is not the question before us ; it 

 is sufficient for rae to say that 67,000 mulberry 

 trees of the best sorts and' the finest vegetation, 

 among which are s(jen a great number of the 

 Morus mullicnulis, on which M. Beauvais princi- 

 j)ally founds his hopes for second annual crops, 

 which he j)ro];oses to undertake, cover there, in 

 nurseries and distinct jilantations, 16 hectares and 

 a half of ground, (about 41 acres.) 



Tlio cstablishnjent, so far as it has advanced, 

 will be able to produce annually, with as little de- 

 lay as the condition of its young trees will admit, 

 150 ounces of seed. During the five last years, the 

 medium product of an ounce in the establishments 

 of the South, has not exceeded 50 to 55 pounds of 

 cocoons, that is to say about 10,000 worms only out 

 of 42,000 which the ounce contains, have arrived 

 at that last period, which connects a simple worm 

 with the enjoyments of refined civilization ; whilst 



