SILK-WORMS. 
15 ! 
occasion severe losses, if the leaves are not dried 
quickly, as I then dried those I gave my silk- 
worms. 
In the other ages, the leaves may easily be kept 
two or three days : but on the days when the silk- 
worms are voracious, a number of persons must 
be continually at work, to provide for their daily 
consumption ; and it is thus doing a great deal 
when we can get the leaves gathered a day or two 
before they are wanted, which I always do. 
A number of writers say, that in cases of con- 
tinued rains, nothing better can be done than to 
cut small branches of the mulberry trees, bring 
them home in carts, and hang them up in the 
houses, thus to dry them as well as possible. 
These are errors which one writer copies from 
another without weighing the absurdity of the 
idea. In one single day of the extreme voracity, 
healthy silk-worms, proceeding from five ounces 
of eggs, will devour 975 pounds of leaves. (§ 4.) 
In following this last system, to obtain such 
a quantity of leaves, it would be necessary to cut 
6000 pounds weight of branches, supposing that 
the shoots of those trees only are to be cut 
which may produce leaves again in the year. 
This might have been done in the time when, 
from one ounce of eggs, only fifteen or twenty 
pounds of cocoons were obtained, because the 
worms did not hatch well, or died in their different 
h 4 
