410 
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC ENTOMOLOGY 
[Vol. 11 
with soils and crops from the point of view of the agronomist, with 
swine or poultry problems from the conception of one who has made 
a special study of these particular subjects, but the average student 
is not able to coordinate these studies as could be done if he had first 
obtained a knowledge of applied ecology in its relation to agricultural 
topics. 
OBSERVATIONS ON THE SILK INDUSTRY IN CHINA 
By C. W. Woodworth 
One of the largest industries, at least from the standpoint of exports, 
is the production of silk. The great center of its production is the 
lower Yangtsee Valley between Nanking and Shanghai and southward 
to Hangchow. 
I have had the opportunity of travelling over this whole district and 
while it was in midwinter I was still able to get a good idea of the extent 
of the industry and learn much about the practices. 
Through this region the prevailing tree cultivated is the mulberry. 
The trees are small and planted quite thickly, perhaps ten feet apart, 
and kept cut back with the trunk seldom above six feet high, but not 
winter pruned. The trees are cut back during the summer at the 
close of the silkworm feeding season almost as severely as the short 
pruned grapevines and produce a fine growth of sucker-like branches, 
often 3-4 ft. long, before winter. It is from these that the leaves are 
gathered the following spring. During the winter these are often tied 
together and I am not sure that I know exactly what for; it looks as 
though it was to keep them up out of the way when cultivating. 
Most mulberry orchards are well cultivated, but in many cases the 
trees are planted on and among graves, when they are not cultivated 
at all and it looks as though they did as well as any others. 
During the feeding season mulberry leaves are sold on the streets, 
like vegetables and command a good price. Nearly every season 
there are not enough leaves to supply the worms grown. There is a 
movement on foot to greatly increase the planting of mulberries. 
The University has just planted about 15,000 cuttings to help in this 
work. 
Because of the shortage of leaves, early hatching and small early 
maturing varieties are favored though they have the large French and 
Italian varieties in the schools. It seems hard to make the farmer see 
the advantage, they object that these big worms eat too much! 
One of my problems is to see whether they are right. I have gath¬ 
ered together sixty-four varieties (some of which may be duplicates) 
