SILK GROWER'S MANUAL. 123 



[From the Tehama Observer, January 3, 1866.] 



L. PKEVOST ON SILK CULTURE. 



SAN JOSE, January 20th, 1866. 

 Editor Tehama Observer, 



DEAR SIR: Please accept my thanks for having 

 sent me the Observer, containing an article on " Silk 

 Culture." I wish that all editors who publish anything 

 on the subject would do the same. 



My five years raising silk here have demonstrated 

 beyond any doubt that California is the best spot on 

 the globe for raising silk. In one of my letters to the 

 Farmer, lately, in -enumerating the advantages that 

 we have here over France and Italy, I have fully 

 established that we can produce silk here for the half 

 of the cost there ; and we will have the highest price 

 of the market, our silk being of first quality as I can 

 prove by certificates from the highest scientific silk 

 societies in Europe, to which I sent samples of silk 

 cocoons and reeled silk to be tested. 



Here, we have nothing to disturb the worms. Our 

 climate is so very superior, that I was enabled to sim- 

 plify the culture considerably. I made a new system, 

 adapted to the California climate, by which one man 

 can take care of and raise as many silkworms as eight 

 men would in France or Italy under the old system, 

 that the moisture of the climate obliges them to follow. 



A very remarkable fact is that our climate, which 

 is so favorable to the silkworms, is also extremely 



