SILK GROWER'S MANUAL. 133 



for silk culture. Why this is so, is chiefly the absence 

 of rain-storms, thunder, etc., during the feeding of 

 worms in June. The first time I raised the silk, it was 

 the prevailing opinion that it could not profitably be 

 done, owing to the high price of labor. I was aware of 

 the difference in this feature of California from ether 

 silk-growing countries ; but it is equally a fact that for 

 the price of renting one acre of land in Italy or France 

 two or three acres can be bought here. This, with the 

 employment of Chinese, equalized the labor question. 

 To enumerate in detail a few of the advantages Califor- 

 nia possesses over other silk-growing countries, I note 

 the following facts : In France and Italy, notwithstand- 

 ing all the care which the climate forces growers to give 

 the worms, they are more or less diseased in the best 

 years, calculating their loss *at least 25 to 30 per 

 cent., and often running as high as 75 per cent., while 

 in California we have no loss of worms from disease, 

 though treating them roughly. The climate so favora- 

 ble to their culture is equally so to the growth of the 

 mulberry tree, surpassing anything I have witnessed 

 elsewhere. Of course the more food we have the more 

 worms we can raise. In the silk countries already 

 named, the land having been cultivated for centuries, is 

 exhausted, and to sustain it a great outlay of money is 

 required to properly manure 'and enrich the soil. Here 

 all this is unnecessary, as well as the erection, as in 

 other parts of the world, of very large and expensive 

 buildings, with costly apparatus. A structure not cost- 

 ing one-quarter the amount usually expended answering 



