435 
/ 
for the further encouragement of industry, that I found, this summer, at 
Kiovia, a poor taylor, a native of Upper Silesia, who having a small house 
overagainst the Mulberry-Garden planted by Peter the Great, and having 
seen the rearing of Silkworms in his native country, began three years ago 
to rear some with the leaves of that Garden. Last year he delivered twenty- 
five pounds of Silk to the Director of the Imperial Garden there, who paid 
him, by order of the Empress, ten rubles a pound. I visited him as a man 
of desert: I found his house, about twenty feet square, partitioned into four 
small rooms; in the corner of one of these I found a dozen sacks, of about 
three bushels each, filled with as large and fine cocoons as I have seen in 
Italy, and much finer than my own; of these this industrious man hoped to 
get thirty pounds of Silk. Except the men and boys he employed to gather 
the leaves, he had for his work to take care of his Worms, whose number 
he rated to be near a hundred thousand, no more help than his wife, an 
elderly woman, and three children, of twelve, thirteen, and fourteen years 
of age. 
As another proof how encouragement raised industry in a similar object, 
I must add, that in the Prussian dominions Mulberry-trees were planted by 
order of Frederick William, father to Frederick II. A few hundreds of 
pounds of Silk were made yearly. This last King neglected the object in 
the first twelve years of his reign; the years 1^50, 1^51, and 1 ?52, pro¬ 
duced together no more than one hundred and fifty pounds. Count Hertz - 
berg got the care of it. Though taken up with ministerial affairs, he found 
the object so interesting, encouraged the same with such zeal, gave even 
medals out of his own pocket, that an incredible augmentation ensued. In 
the year 1^94, when he died, fourteen thousand pounds of Silk were deli¬ 
vered into the Berlin manufacture, proved to be Prussian Silk. Great 
Britain and Ireland would outdo them very soon, if steps were taken to 
procure Mulberry seeds and plantations, and that the known public spirit 
of the Nation would turn its attention to that object, and make it a 
national one. 
As a third and last proof, permit me, Sir, to add, that the late Empress, 
hearing that some Mulberry-trees, planted by Peter the Great, on an island 
in the Wolga, near Czaritzin, were grown to a great height, and augmented 
by nature, she placed there a colony of Russians, to the number of four 
hundred males (the place called Achtouba); gave them ten years exemption 
