ON niULBERUY TREES. 97 



of confining the premiums in future to those competitors 

 who make the most silk according to their number of 

 trees, or according to the space of ground they occupy 

 as a mulberry plantation, taking into account the actual 

 expense. Thus the object of the Society, which we 

 presume to be the encouragement of actual silk growing 

 in our county, would be likely to be promoted. Many 

 trees may have been raised merely to obtain the Socie- 

 ty's premium, and no practical advantages derived for 

 the benefit of the community at large : the trees after- 

 wards destroyed or converted to uses foreign from the 

 object of the Society. 



The committee are aware of the small progress that 

 has been made in our county in the silk culture. Still 

 they would not despair of its successful prosecution in our 

 country at large, and that the farmers of Essex may do 

 their part when the subject shall be better understood, 

 and emerge from its present infancy. 



The great violence that was done to this enterprise by 

 the late famous " muUicaulis speculation," which came 

 nigh destroying it when only in its embryo, has delayed 

 its progress ; trees were then raised with very little ex- 

 pense and chaffered about for sale merely on specula- 

 tion, holding up to view extravagant prospects of profits 

 which no man of sense could expect to realize; the tree 

 itself was brought into disrepute, and an odium cast up- 

 on the silk culture by which it became a subject of 

 even ridicule. Many abandoned the project for fear of 

 encountering the obloquy cast upon it, and it became 

 dangerous to the reputation of a person to say a word in 

 its favor. 



The committee, in proposing a discontinuance of the 

 premiums on merely raising mulberry trees, would not 

 recommend imitating the narrow policy of some of our 

 sister States as well as that of our own honored Com- 

 monwealth, by neglecting to continue the bounty on 

 silk, thus endangering the bantling hitherto led by the 

 hand, by quitting our hold before it shall have acquired 

 suflficient strength to bear its own weight. Feeling con- 

 fident that by still assisting and patronising it, (in our 



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