OF TH 



TJNIVEF 



SILK GROWER'S MANUAL. 217 



CHAPTER XV. 



TREATMENT OF SILKWORMS, ACCORDING TO OUR CLIMATE. 



What I have previously said in the different sections 

 is in order to familiarize my readers with the nature 

 and treatment of the silkworms, that they may be able 

 to know what is best to do, and then be competent 

 judges to appreciate the advantages of our California 

 silk culture, which is so simplified that it gives us a 

 great advantage over other silk countries. 



Count Dandolo is considered the best writer on silk- 

 worms, and the best authority ; this explains to you, 

 how a book on the silk raising cannot be written without 

 referring to him often ; but to give you an idea of the 

 immense work that the climate in Italy forces them to 

 do, compared with the simple and economical mode of 

 feeding, etc., that our fine silk climate allows us to use 

 here, I only have to say to you that Dandolo's work on 

 the treatment of the silkworm is a book of large size, 

 containing three hundred and eighty-four pages, and a 

 great number of plates ; giving, first, a plan of the 

 complicated and expensive cocoonery which must -be 

 built there, with also the figures of a great number of 

 different apparatus that are needed there, which are 

 very costly, and of which we have no need here. 



They have been obliged to feed there with leaves up 

 to the present day, while here we feed our worms with 

 branches. I have explained in my letters in the be- 



