1840.] SENATE.~-No. 36. 101 



the white mulberry for feed for their worms ; and a large pro- 

 portion of these were destroyed by the severe winter of 1834-5. 



The silk culture became again strongly the subject of public 

 attention in 1826. Congress encouraged it, by the publication 

 and distribution of large editions of manuals and treatises, pre- 

 pared with great care and fullness, and giving all the directions 

 and details necessary to the prosecution of the business, from 

 the raising of the trees, to the preparation of the article for use. 

 The vast amounts of money annually sent abroad for the pur- 

 chase of this article of universal use and almost of necessity, 

 the increasing use of the article among all classes of people, 

 and to an extent probably not known in any other country ; 

 and, at the same time, the acknowledged capacity of the coun- 

 try to produce silk, and of the best quality, gave new promi- 

 nence to the subject in the community, and drew the public 

 attention to it with an intense interest ; but with no greater in- 

 terest than in an economical view, in the opinion of many in- 

 telligent men, its national importance may justly claim. 



In 1830, the introduction of a new plant into the country,* 

 which promised from its extraordinary capacity of rapid multi- 

 plication, and its productiveness of foliage, to furnish superior 

 advantages for the prosecution of the silk culture, gave a new 

 impulse to the cause, and aroused public enthusiasm to a high 

 degree of fervor. The disappointment occasioned by the al- 

 most universal destruction of these plants by the frosts, pro- 

 duced a revulsion in public feeling ; and the progress of the 

 silk culture was again arrested and set back in a strong ebb. 



It does not fall within my province to detail more particu- 

 larly the history of events in relation to this subject. The 

 introduction of this extraordinary variety of the mulberry, the 

 Morus Multicaulis or many stalked mulberry, or, as I think it 

 should be called after the name of the spirited individual who 

 brought it into Europe, the Perottet mulberry, led to the intro- 

 duction of other valuable varieties. About this time the erec- 

 tion of a cocoonery at Northampton, in Massachusetts, of ex- 



* The Perottet mulberry, or Morus Multicaulis. 



