68 BIRECT BENEFITS FROM MOTHS. 



twenty-five days have had the cocoons in my 

 basins, and by the twenty-ninth or thirty-first day 

 a new progeny feeding in my trays. This makes 

 it a prize to whoever would undertake the cultiva- 

 tion of it." 



In the Philosophical Transactions* we have an 

 account of a moth found in America, which pro- 

 duces a cocoon, heavier and more productive than 

 that of the common Silkworm ; it, besides, has 

 the quality of being greatly stronger, for it has been 

 found by Latrcillc, that twenty filaments will bear 

 an ounce more weight than the same number of 

 ordinary silk.t 



The inhabitants of Chimpaucing, Textula, and 

 other places of South America, manufacture stock- 

 ings and handkerchiefs from the ovate nests of 

 caterpillars, which feed on the leaves of Psydium 

 pi/niferum wndpomi/erum.X These nests are eight 

 inches long, and of a gray colour. 



In an extensive and fertile valley, 10,500 feet 

 above the level of the sea, in the mountains of San- 

 tarosa, at Valladolid, one of the twelve intenden- 

 cies into which Mexico is now divided, upon the 

 shrub Arbutus Madrona, as well as other trees. 

 Baron Humboldt observed immense numbers of 



• Phil. Trans, for 17.')9, p. 54. 



•|- Latreillr, Hist. Nut. xiv. p. ISO. 



X Annals of Botany, vol. ii. p. 104. 



