92 PREMIUMS OFFERED. 



county generally to engage in the culture of silk, to estimate 

 the benefits which may result to others from the knowledge of 

 the experiments and practices of the claimants, in the prosecu- 

 tion of this new and interesting business. 



It is the object of the Society to reward valuable improve- 

 ments only, and consequently it will not feel bound to pay the 

 premiums offered, unless something superior, more valuable, and 

 better of its kind, is exhibited than those nurseries, plantations, 

 and specimens of silk, &c., for which premiums have heretofore 

 been given. On the other hand, gratuities will be given should 

 any valuable invention or improvement in the cultivation of the 

 white or Chinese mulberry trees, the management of silk worms, 

 the manufacture of silk, or any thing calculated to promote the 

 object in view, be exhibited, and for which no particular pre- 

 miums are offered. 



Applicants for the ninth and tenth premiums will bear in 

 mind that it is for the amount of food for silk worms which their 

 trees, in 1837, shall be adjudged capable of producing, more 

 than their trees, if any they have, produced last year, (1834,) 

 that these premiums are offered, and that a statement of the 

 number and condition of their trees the present spring, certified 

 by disinterested witnesses, will be required. These premiums 

 are designed to effect two objects — the planting of new nurse- 

 ries, and the improvement and preservation of nurseries and 

 plantations for which premiums have been paid by this Society. 

 The Committee to whom this subject has been referred by the 

 Trustees, cannot dismiss it without once more calling the serious 

 attention of the farmers of Essex county to the culture of silk. 

 It is a product which can never fail to find a market, and which 

 we have every reason to believe can be produced here as well 

 as elsewhere. Discouragements and difficulties, as in every 

 other business which is new to those who undertake to practise 

 it, must be encountered, but patience and perseverance will con- 

 quer them all. " Believe it, or not," says one of our most in- 

 telligent and gifted editors,* " men of New England, your pros- 

 perity is yet to depend chiefly, if not altogether, upon agriculture 



* John Neal, Esq., Portland. 



