60 THE CALIFORNIA 



wet leaves, which was enough to make any worms 

 sickly. 



4th. As I had to depend on a great many persons 

 for the food ; we were requiring it all from the vicinity 

 of Sacramento, Marysville, Nicolaus, Lincoln, New- 

 castle, Folsom, etc., etc. The leaves coming in bags 

 were withered and nearly all the time heated this last 

 condition was sufficient to kill them all. 



5th. I have never been able while there to have 

 -them fed regularly or full fed. Sometimes fed but 

 twice and other times three times, when they ought to 

 have been fed four or five times a day. It is very 

 extraordinary that under such bad treatment they kept 

 looking and doing well for nearly six weeks, until the 

 17th of June. 



6th. On that day all the mulberry food was exhausted 

 and we had no more to give them, so we were obliged 

 to give them " Osage Orange." This forced change 

 from their natural food, the mulberry, started the dis- 

 ease, and they commenced dying by large numbers 

 every day ; some of them started to make their cocoons 

 to the number of fifteen thousand. 



I feel certain that you and the public, who can judge 

 correctly, will all agree with me, that to have so many 

 cocoons, under a combination of so many bad circum- 

 stances, and call that a success, it certainly speaks 

 very highly in favor of our climate for silk culture, 

 because elsewhere one of these reasons would have 

 been enough to have killed them all. I have told many 

 persons that this is no reason to think that Sacramento 





