ON SILK MANUFACTURE IN THE EXHIBITION. 231 



apostle of tho regeneration of the silkworm fed on the mulberry, has 

 presented the monography of the cocoon. 



" We must also direct attention to the excellent cocoons sent from 

 other countries which seemed destined to remain unfit for the production 

 of silk ; those, for instance, of M. Tcepfer, of Stettin, and those of the 

 ' Societe Sericole ' of Stockholm. 



" There are at present chances of success for all ' educators ' of the 

 silkworm who will remove from the infected centres ; and encourage- 

 ment should be given to the enlargement of the areas from whence the 

 raw material may be purchased. In this direction, Algeria, which exhi- 

 bits some remarkable samples of the cocoon, may render great service to 

 France. M. Allier, director of the farming school near Gap, who has 

 cultivated the mulberry in the Higher Alps, has also sent some very fine 

 cocoons. And, fiaally, an excellent collection has arrived from French 

 Guiana, where a clever colonist, M. Michely, conceived the happy idea 

 of making successive ' educations ' under simple sheds, an idea which 

 must prove fruitful of good results in a climate so genial as that in which 

 he resides, and which cannot, therefore, be too much encouraged." 



The number of exhibitors in this class is 175, to 79 of whom medals 

 are awarded, and of 74 honourable mention is made. 



Italy. — In reporting on the silk trade of this country on former 

 occasions (1851 and 1855), it was difficult to assign its due position to 

 the several separate states into which it was then divided. The quanti- 

 ties of silk produced by each was by no means reliable evidence of their 

 relative importance, the profitable results being more or less affected by 

 the fiscal exactions, paltry jealousies, and passport impediments of each 

 petty sovereignty or grand dukedom. Hence in those years this important 

 industry was most imperfectly represented. Much was exhibited in 1855 

 at Paris, as of Austrian growth, which was really of Italian, particularly 

 of the Lombardian provinces, and much that ought to have found a place 

 amongst the products of Italy was altogether withheld by the caprice of 

 arbitrary rulers, as in Naples and Austrian Lombardy, in 1851. Happily, 

 however, a new state of things has supervened, and, with the exception 

 of Rome and Venice, Italy being no longer divided into fractional auto- 

 nomies with their many insecure and opposing interests, but apparently 

 consolidated under one constitutional king and government, sounder 

 maxims of political economy have obtained their proper influence on the 

 legislative mind, some tangible results of which were to be found in the 

 recent improvised Exhibition at Florence, and which has been still 

 more largely followed up by what appears in the International one of 

 1862. 



The writer was furnished, when reporting to the Society of Arts on 

 the silk department of the Italian Exhibition of 1861 (which he was 

 deputed to visit for that purpose), with some statistics from which the 

 importance of this valuable indigenous culture may be inferred. From 

 these materials it appears that the annual production of the silkworm in 



