THE AILANTHUS SILKWORM AND THE AILANTHUS TREE. 341 



them. To save the few that may possibly fall down, you would do well to 

 place a few leaves where the bottles stand, upon which the worms will 

 creep immediately. You must guard against giving these worms old leaves 

 gathered from a large tree, because they could not be so easily devoured by 

 them, and they would kill a great many. This inconvenience would not 

 arise where the plantations are made expressly for the worms, because the 

 frequent cutting of the trees makes them put forth new shoots and tender 

 leaves. 



In placing the young worms on the Ailanthus trees, they must be 

 strewed as it were on the plants. You must bring them on the old leaves 

 in large baskets lined with paper, and you must fix these leaves on the 

 trees. They might be fixed with pins or tied on till the worms have hold of 

 the new leaves. Experience cau alone teach the number of worms required 

 on each tree. When once the worms are securely fixed on the leaves, there 

 is no further trouble except to see that ants and wasps do not carry them off. 

 The best manner of doing this would be to destroy the wasps in the spring 

 time before the nests are made. 



When the worms have come to their fourth change, they begin to 

 spin their cocoons on the leaves of the Ailanthus (or even on any other 

 ones in the vicinity), and the cocoons may be gathered eight or ten days 

 after the beginning of the spinning. 



About a month after the cocoons are finished the moths will appear. 

 They will lay as in the spring time, and soon after the eggs will be hatched . 

 The same process must be gone through as I have described, if you are able 

 to hatch the eggs about the 30th August. 



This second cultivation would end the first days of October — that is, if 

 it were a torable season. The best manner of preserving the reproductive 

 cocoons during the winter has not been fully ascertained ; but every day 

 brings forth new methods of doing so. Meanwhile, we advise our readers 

 to thread the cocoons in rows of one hundred each, and hang them up in 

 different temperatures, so that we may find out which suits them best. 

 They must not be kept together in baskets or boxes, as they will more or 

 less, ferment ; and then if the moth does not come forth prematurely, they 

 may contract maladies, which will be transmitted to the eggs, and most 

 probably to forthcoming generations. The fear of birds seems to strike 

 people who hear of this open-air cultivation, and I have given great atten- 

 tion to this subject. This fear has almost totally disappeared under the 

 experiences of Messrs. Hebert and Lamotte-Barace, especially since they 

 have begun on a larger scale the cultivation of this worm ; and if ants, wasps, 

 or birds, do carry off a small quantity, it is not missed in a large plantation 

 where these worms feed. The same reasoning applies to fields where cereals 

 are grown, and which birds and insects attack, and of which one does not 

 count the ravages because of the enormous quantity of the crop. 



Culture of Ailanthus Glandulosa. — This is not the place to enter into 

 the etymology of the name of this tree ; suffice it to say, that its name of 

 Venus du Japon, or Japan Varnish Tree, was given to it by Abbe Incar- 



