PART III. -NATURAL HISTORY. 
ORIGINAL COM MUNICA'l’l ON.S. 
- «- 
Article I .—On the Mmiagement of the Silk-Worm; and 
on growing Silk, as a means of bettering the condition of 
the labouring classes. By A Horticulturist. 
Gentlemen, 
As you dedicate a few pages of the Horticultui’al Register 
to Natural History, perhaps a short account of the rearing of the Silk- 
Worm, with a few observations respecting the growth of Silk in this 
country, may not be unacceptable. 
The repeated trials that have taken place in this country, in the 
hope of establishing the growth of silk as a source of profit, and 
more particularly the failure of the British, Irish, and Colonial Silk 
Company, of late years, might silence any attempt to prosecute any 
scheme of the like, again. Although I am aware of these failures, still 
I am confident (as I have had some experience in rearing the Silk¬ 
worm in this country) that they will ultimately be successful, if prose¬ 
cuted in the way I shall point out. I have no idea that it would yield 
a profit to any company, however persevering, whose establishments 
must necessarily be expensive : but it might yield a profit to the la¬ 
bourer, who could not meet with labour otherwise. 
It has rarely happened of late years, that the labourer and all his ^ 
family have been in constant employ. It is with a view of employing 
the unemployed, that I venture to lay this before you, that it may in¬ 
duce the landed proprietor to find Mulberry plants to produce food 
for the labourer’s Silk-worms, and the labourer’s unemployed family 
might find labour at their own risk of remuneration, according to 
their success in the rearing of the Silk-worm. 
Before the period for hatching the Silkworm amves, the cottager 
should erect stages around the apartment intended for the Silk-worms. 
Few cottagers have much spare room, but they must put themselves 
to a little inconvenience for about a month, when they have a prospect 
of being repaid for it. High posts of wood should be fixed round the 
apartment, about three feet apart, with others exactly opposite, about 
two feet and a half from the wall; across these should be nailed 
pieces of wood, about twenty inches, or two feet apart. These are 
intended to support the trays—they are made as follows : Nail four 
