Leaders. 99 



To successfully rear the ordinary silk-worm, patience 

 and capital must first be expended in cultivating the 

 mulberry required for its food. Again, like all animals 

 long domesticated, it has as many diseases as a horse, 

 and the most unremitting attention is required lest both 

 crop and stock be a total failure. 



Already the reader will have noticed that the food of 

 all the worms to which his attention has been called is 

 ready to hand, and also that they are very hardy. To 

 collect the cocoons for a new crop, to care for the eggs 

 for a few days until they hatch, and to feed the young 

 until they are an inch or so long, is all that is required ; 

 then they can be transferred to the trees, and left with 

 safety to the care of Nature. About twenty -five days 

 after hatching they must be watched, and those ready 

 to spin selected, pickled, and drawn, allowing enough to 

 form their cocoons to produce seed for the next crop. 



Here is a new and lucrative industry, eminently adapt- 

 ed to those who, from sex or other causes, are unfitted 

 for severe manual labor, yet whose necessities compel 

 them to do something. Here is a boon to the female 

 population of our rural districts, to whom not energy nor 

 industry, but only the opportunity to provide for them- 

 selves, is wanting. No fear of over-production need be 

 felt, for the worms may be allowed to spin their cocoons, 

 and if they cannot be unreeled and made into goods as 

 fine as those from the cocoons of the ordinary silk-worm 

 which is by no means certain at all events they can 

 be carded, spun, and woven into an excellent, durable, 

 and desirable fabric. If the raw material can be had 

 in any quantity, no fear need be entertained in this 

 country that it will not be utilized. 



As to making the gut, who will claim that a manuf act- 



