172 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. [March, 



and her wealth, she increases her real power ; strengthens the 

 attachments of her children to their home, and abates the de- 

 sire of emigration. In introducing this article, so emphatically 

 of domestic and household industry, she multiplies the sources 

 of domestic comfort and competence ; and affords no small nor 

 inefficient contribution to the cause of good morals and philan- 

 thropy. 



I should do injustice to my oAvn sense of grateful duty, 

 if I did not call the attention of my readers to the mir- 

 acles of divine Providence in this wonderful animal, the 

 silk worm ; at his entrance into life, among the smallest of 

 living existences, which come within the cognizance of our 

 senses ; in six weeks, at farthest, completing his work ; and by 

 his humble and unobtrusive labors, contributing largely to the 

 clothing of half mankind, and creating yearly millions and mil- 

 lions of wealth. It would be curious to calculate the hands he 

 fills, the mouths he feeds, the wheels he sets in motion, the 

 ships he loads, and the vast riches to which his annual labors 

 amount. This reads a striking lesson to the reflecting mind, 

 on the immense results which spring from regular and combin- 

 ed, though minute and often a disdained labor. Nor are his 

 changes the less extraordinary or striking to the thoughtful 

 mind. Nature is every where full of mysterious transforma- 

 tions, which show that the power of death has its limits, and 

 indicate the wonderful progress of animated existence. Having 

 accomplished his appointed task, he wraps himself in his silken 

 shroud, and with him death is only a transient sleep. If left 

 to himself, he soon emerges from his tomb, no longer a reptile, 

 but a winged chrysalis, to enjoy another existence. In the cu- 

 rious transformations of this humble insect, man may see an in- 

 structive indication and testimony of the progress of being ; and 

 a proof that death is not annihilation. May we, as men, exult 

 in the hopes, gathered from such beautiful examples in nature, 

 and confirmed by divine revelation, that with man also, death 

 is only the threshold of life ; and that for him to burst these 

 cearments of the grave, is not like the silk worm, to pass rap- 

 idly through another form of being, but to enter upon an 

 immortality. 



