102 MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS. 



3. There is also the large pale white worm, producing white 

 silk, and worms that produce orange colored silk, which are 

 j)rohahlj varieties of the large drab colored worm. The orange 

 colored are not so valuable as the straw colored or white cocoons. 



Several crops in succession may be produced the same year, 

 if the eggs be kept in an ice house till wanted ; or a second or 

 third crop may be obtained from the eggs produced by the first 

 or second. The eggs of the silk worm will bear a greater de- 

 gree of heat without hatching, the same season they are laid, 

 than is required to hatch them the following spring. By being 

 chilled the preceding winter, they acquire a greater sensibility to 

 heat, and a greater disposition to hatch. When we wish to 

 hatch them the same season they are laid, this process of nature 

 must be imitated. Let the butterflies come out of the cocoons 

 and lay their eggs in a cool place, let the eggs be placed awhile 

 in an ice house or a cold cellar, and then exposed to continued 

 heat, kept up artificially, somewhere between eighty and one 

 hundred degrees of Fahrenheit, in an atmosphere kept moist by 

 steam, until they hatch. Worms for a second crop may be 

 hatched ten or more days before the preceding crop are expected 

 to complete their cocoons, as they will require but little space 

 before the shelves may be cleared for them. 



We have said that the leaves on which the worms are fed 

 must be dry, that is, must have no water adhering to them. 

 Wet leaves produce sickness. But in large establishments, 

 during the last age of the worms, a large quantity must be con- 

 sumed daily, and during long storms it may become necessary to 

 gather the leaves wet, and as necessary to dry them. This may 

 be done by spreading them before a brisk fire, continually turn- 

 ing them with a fork ; or by putting twenty or thirty pounds into 

 a dry sheet, folding it into the form of a sack, in which if shaken 

 from one end of the sheet to the other by two persons taking 

 hold of the four corners, they will in a few moments appear 

 quite dry ; or by many other means which the ingenuity of the 

 silk culturist may suggest. 



The leaves of trees which grow in moist grounds, or shaded 

 from the sun, those from suckers, he, which are full of sap and 



