The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

CHINESE MODE OF REARING SILK-WORMS, ETC. 133
lyoke. 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 com-
pleted, with hammocks suspended over the cradles, easily put in
motion, and so constructed 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 simultaneously.
About half of the cocoonery has hurdles of lattice work, cover-
ed in part with gauze netting four feet wide and the same
number of tiers in height. The cocoonery is supposed to be
sufficiently open on the sides, ends, and roof, to admit a free
circulation of pure air. The flooring is the natural earth.
" The past winter has been uncommonly severe on grape-vines
and 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 there were severe frosts, destroy-
ing garden vegetables, and injuring some early mulberry fohage;
added to this, 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
plantations, you saw silk-worms in the act of winding, and
others in a good state of forwardness. On the day of your de-
parture, I received a letter from a distant silk grower, a staunch
promoter of the one early and open crop system, that, on ac-
count of the unpropitious season and condition of his trees, he
would delay fetching out his worms until 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 fohage gathered
and dried the year preceding ; which, being pulverized and
moistened with water, may be given to the worms until new
foliage appears ; and they 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 with bark peeled
from the lartre Asiatics to be used for making bark-silk, in ad-