Leaders. 87 



use any portion or the whole of my letters on the sub- 

 ject of drawing silk gut from our native silk-worms. I 

 do nothing to the worm previous to drawing the gut, 

 except to pin it to a long board in order to prevent it 

 from squirming pin it at both ends. I cannot tell you 

 exactly at what spot or point to cut the worm, in order 

 to cut the silk sacks at the best point, and would ad- 

 vise you make a careful dissection (a vivisection) of the 

 worm, in order to find the best point to cut the silk 

 sacks, which should not be where the sacks are the 

 largest, but sufficiently large to allow a sufficient flow 

 of the fluid silk to make the gut of the right size. Of 

 course it requires a much longer time for as large a fibre 

 as gut to harden and become silk, than the fine fibre, as 

 spun by the worm, which is instantaneous. If you will 

 examine the floss silk between the outer and inner shell 

 of the cocoon of the Attacus cecropia, you will find that 

 fibre a strong silk provided the cocoon is not an old 

 weather-beaten one. I should think you might find on 

 Long Island both the Attacus prometheus and the At- 

 tacus cecropia the former on the spice -bush or sas- 

 safras ; the latter on the button - ball bush, so called, 

 which grows in swampy places. The silk of the Prome- 

 theus is of the finest and strongest quality, but not near 

 as large as the cocoons of the Attacus cecropia. If the 

 silk of the Attacus cecropia is strong, why should not 

 the gut be strong? 



"Last year there were a few Cecropias that fed and 

 spun on my pear-trees. I wish now that I had drawn 

 some gut from them, which I would have cheerfully sent 

 to you, but I wanted the moths to put up with other in- 

 sects, and let them spin their cocoons on my pear-trees. 

 If I find any this year I will, if alive and well enough, 



