63 THE SILK WORM. 



tree has put forth leaves sufficient for their support. 

 Recent attempts which have been made to rear 

 Silk Worms in England, do not offer much encourage- 

 ment to the pursuit, except as matter of amusement. 

 Some pairs of silk stockings, of good quality, are to 

 be seen in the gallery of " The National Repository," 

 woven from silk of home production. The Worms 

 which spun this, were reared by Mrs. Allen, of 

 Wandsworth, the result of whose careful observations 

 on this subject I. as been obtained. 



" The difficulty of procuring a sufficient and con- 

 tinuous supply of proper food was the reason why this 

 lady was obliged to relinquish a pursuit in which she 

 had taken much pleasure for four successive years. 



" Mrs. Allen's testimony strongly corroborates the 

 necessity of extreme cleanliness in preserving the 

 health of the Worms. The most scrupulous attention 

 seems to have been paid by her to this particular, as 

 well as to the dryness of the leaves, and the tempera- 

 ture of the apartment wherein the insects were rear- 

 ed and set to spin ; and yet a very great mortality 

 was always experienced among them, scarcely more 

 than one in five of the Worms that were hatched, 

 coming to maturity and forming their cocoons. Of 

 these it required 1000 to furnish an ounce more. 

 The cocoons were gathered in eight days from their 

 commencement, and in eight days more were wound 

 off. No necessity hence arose for destroying the vi- 

 tality of the insects to prevent their piercing the balls. 

 The chrysalis being placed in bran, in due time be- 

 came moths and produced eggs, each female furnish- 

 ing between three and four hundred." 



From the foregoing experiments, it will be seen 

 that nothing has, as yet, been discovered, which can 



