272 
CULTURE OF SILK. 
CULTURE OF SILK. 
As requested, I forward you a sketch of Mr. 
Giil’s cradle for feeding worms, and the following 
account of the culture of silk. 
Transverse View of Feeding-Cradle.—Fig. 54. 
I have five patches of mulberry; in all, ten or 
twelve acres; two parcels of which you have 
seen. The one adjoining my garden, by estima¬ 
tion, may furnish foliage sufficient for one and a 
half millions of worms. The mulberries consist 
of the White, Black, Alpine, Broosa, Moretta, 
Alata, Multicaulis, Asiatic, and large leaf Canton. 
The two latter I prefer for my own use, the Can¬ 
ton for early feeding with foliage, and the Asiatic 
for branch feeding. The Canton is highly ap¬ 
proved of for producing heavy and firm cocoons, 
which, by competent testimony and experiments, 
have been found in favor of the Canton feed, as 
five to eight, and is the true species used by the 
Chinese, as testified by a resident missionary, 
the Rev. E. C. Bridgman, and more recently by 
Dr. Parker, while on his late visit to the United 
States. I consider the Pea-nut variety of worms 
the best for producing the most silk of a good 
quality. 
From an elevated plat near my cocoonery you 
had a view of our extensive meadows spread out 
at the foot of Mount Holyoke. My cocoonery you 
have examined with its fixtures for feeding silk 
worms, the mode of open feeding, ventilator, and 
ventilating cradles. Since you left the whole has 
been completed, with hammocks suspended over 
the cradles easily put in motion, and so construct¬ 
ed that no offal can drop into the cradles beneath, 
nor interfere with the rocking motion or winding ; 
the arrangement is much admired, and estimated 
to accommodate half a million of worms or more, 
to be fed at a time. About half of the cocoonery 
has hurdles of lattice-work, covered in part with 
gauze netting 4 feet wide and four tiers in height. 
The cocoonery is supposed to be sufficiently open 
on the sides, ends, and roof, to admit a free circu¬ 
lation of pure air. The flooring is the natural 
earth. 
The past winter has been uncommonly severe 
on grape vines, fruit, forest, and mulberry trees; 
the Asiatic I found the most hardy of any other, 
and the Canton the earliest in foliage. On the 21st 
and 22d of May, were severe frosts, destroying 
garden vegetables and injuring some early mulber¬ 
ry foliage—ice was formed in many places. The 
accounts from Vermont and New Hampshire are 
so disastrous as to delay early feeding; while in 
Northampton, June 14, at one of my planta¬ 
tions, you saw silk worms in the act of winding, 
and others in good forwardness. On the day of 
your departure, I received a letter from a distant 
silk-grower, a staunch promoter of the one early 
and open crop system, that on account of the un- 
propitious season and condition of his trees, he 
would delay fetching out his worms to the last of 
June, and then make his great effort upon one 
crop. To provide against premature hatching of 
silk worms, or the disaster of an early frost, it is 
advisable to have foliage gathered and dried the 
year preceding, which being pulverized and moist¬ 
ened with water, may be given the worms until 
new foliage appears, and the worms will eat it 
freely. 
To obtain the most and best foliage of the 
mulberry, it will be necessary, every spring to 
cut or head them down within three or four inches 
of the ground, and preserve the stalks for bark 
silk. I have a quantity of them saved, and bark 
peeled from the large Asiatics to be used for ma¬ 
king bark silk, and a quantity of mulberry leaves 
saved for making paper; the whole process has 
not yet been carried out with either, but has been 
successfully done in France, as testified by M. 
Frassinett. I am endeavoring to have it demon¬ 
strated here, by subjecting both stalk and peeled 
bark to the operation of steaming with soap and 
water to facilitate the separation of the bark from 
the wood, and the outside cuticle from the fibrous 
substance of the bark, before trying the operation 
of the brake, for dressing, carding, spinning, &c. 
Should it prove successful it will be made public. 
Hopes are entertained that what has been done 
may be done again ; that Yankee ingenuity and 
perseverance may prove a match for foreign cheap 
labor. 
The present time has been called the age of in¬ 
vention and improvement. But if there is nothing 
new under the sun, and if what is, has been, and 
may be again, then we may hope to be benefited 
by the reproduction of astonishing results in all 
coming time, and even now, while there has been 
anxious inquiry for some easy mode to separate the 
bark of the mulberry from the wood, a historical 
fact has been recently communicated, by which 
some 240 years ago, in the year 1600, an accident 
occurred’ which resulted in the manufacture of a 
handsome fabric from the fibrous bark of the mul¬ 
berry, with the inference, that the bark had been 
previously used for the manufacture of cordage, on 
account of the superior strength of the fibrous bark 
over that of other materials used for cordage. 
Under date of June 6, 1844, I have been fa- 
