RAW-SILK. 



163 



closest affinity to the best Italian silk, but from a (K,) 

 smaller cocoon, and having a tinge* of green. Superintendent 



7. To enable you to make the comparison, I Garden, 

 have added specimens of our annuals, and two 



small skeins of white and yellow silk of the March 

 bund, large. But we have not been very lucky in 

 the produce of this season. 



8. I have never met with any treatise on the 

 culture of the mulberry and manufacture of silk in 

 China. Dr. Lardner is all but silent on the subject ; 

 except, indeed, his quotation on the authority of 

 Du Halde, in his History of China, that the trees 

 are stinted in their growth ; and also quoting 

 from NoUet, ''that in China only two crops are 

 obtained in the year." If so, the process accords 



I with that of Italy. But this limitation may well 

 be doubled, from the immense importation into 



I England alone which we read of, amounting to 



' 7,000 bales of China raw silk in the past year ; 

 thus exceeding the export from Bengal (the season 



I having been adverse), if the bales were of two 



I maunds each. 



i 9. Perhaps your Government may, on your 

 ' suggestion, be induced to obtain written in- 

 1 formation from the authorities at Canton, which 

 1 eventually might afford useful hints in pro- 

 moting 



* But this tinge is perhaps immaterial, for the reasons 

 ' assigned in the fifth paragraph of my letter to the Board of 

 ' Trade, 2d April. 



M 2 



