166 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



out any expensive fixtures. Vacant rooms in the house, vacant 

 sheds or portions of the barn may serve as a cocoonery, or as 

 the French often call it, a magnanerie or feeding house ; and 

 though artificial heat and an equable temperature to the co- 

 coonery are desirable in order to the most perfect results, yet no 

 such processes have ever prevailed in Mansfield, and therefore 

 are not indispensable to a fair product. A cocoonery may be 

 built upon a farm at a small expense, which may serve the 

 double purpose of a feeding house for the worms and a granary. 

 Mr. Haskell, of Harvard, has erected a building of this des- 

 cription, which is well contrived and not expensive. The di- 

 mensions of such a building may be forty feet by twenty, two 

 stories in height, with a cellar under the whole ; and the farmer 

 will find it useful for various purposes. 



XXV. Labor applicable to the Silk Culture. — Having 

 the trees and the buildings, there remains only the labor to 

 be applied. Now in almost every farmer's family in the coun- 

 try, there is considerable labor, which is comparatively una- 

 vailable. There are persons advanced in life, who have passed 

 the season of severe labor. There are children, whose services 

 might be made productive. There are young women, who 

 cannot, or who, from filial duty or various considerations, are 

 unwilling, to leave the paternal roof. There are many, who 

 are averse to go out to service, and equally averse to go into a 

 factory at a distance from home. There are many young wo- 

 men occupying a standing in society which, in the present 

 condition of public manners, a condition which we cannot alter 

 or transcend at our pleasure, necessarily shuts them out from 

 various employments, of which otherwise they might avail them- 

 selves to aid in their own support ; who are now comparatively 

 without occupation, and whose necessary expenses it may be 

 difficult for them and their parents to meet. Public opinion 

 or fashion, is a despotic tyrant, whose rule is sovereign and in- 

 exorable. It must be considered likewise, that the introduc- 

 tion of machinery, the use of water power, and the large cot- 



