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DIRECTIONS FOR THE BREEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF SILK-WORMS.

Extracted from the TREATISES of The Abbe Boissier de Sauvages, and Pullein.

WITH A PREFACE, GIVING SOME ACCOUNT Of the RISE and PROGRESS OF THE SCHEME For encouraging the CULTURE OF SILK, In PENNSYLVANIA, and the adjacent COLONIES.

PHILADELPHIA: Printed by JOSEPH CRUKSHANK, and ISAAC COLLINS.

M,DCC,LXX.

[Page iii]

THE PREFACE.

THOSE who have introduced useful arts into any coun­try, and laid a foundation for increasing its wealth and employing its industrious inhabitants, have ever been esteemed benefactors to mankind. Whether the scheme, which is set on foot for promoting the culture of silk in this part of America, may soon come to that perfection which is hoped for, is a matter that must greatly depend on the conduct and perseverance of those who may employ themselves in it. Some account, however, of the rise of the design, and of the steps taken to carry it into execution, is not only due in justice to those who have so liberally promoted and encouraged it, but may likewise be a piece of acceptable history to future times.

IT is often from small beginnings, that the most beneficial schemes, and advantageous branches of commerce, have sprung; and the genius of a people, however favourable to the best design, might long rest unexerted, were not a few to take the lead and conduct, for the rest.

THE art of manufacturing silk from the bag or cocoon, in which the bombyx or silk-worm wraps itself up, is said to have been first invented in the island of Cos, in the Archipelago; and a woman, Pamphila, is honored as the inventress. Yet the Romans, amid all their improvements, did not avail themselves of this discovery, till the seat of their empire was changed, and two monks, in the year 555, coming from the Indies to Constantinople, “"brought with them great quanti­ties of the silk-worms eggs, with instructions for hatching them, rearing and feeding the worms, drawing out the silk, and spinning and working it. Upon this, the art was carried to Athens, Thebes and Corinth, then, by work­men from thence, into Sicily, and gradually over all the rest of Italy and Spain, till at length it was introduced into France* ” But none of these establishments were effected without difficulty at first, nor carried into execution without public encouragement.

[Page iv] To any person who will cast an eye on a map of the world, it must be natural to conclude, that this country is well adapted to the raising of silk, as lying so nearly in the same climate and latitude not only with the parts above-mentioned, but likewise with several parts of Persia, and the great empire of China, where this commodity is cultivated to great advan­tage; and we have accordingly not been without many curi­ous persons, who have, for several years, made very successful essays in breeding worms, and raising silk. But, in parti­cular, some judicious and inquisitive members of the Ameri­can Philosophical Society have paid a close attention to this matter, and have convinced themselves, by their own experi­ence, that the silk-worm thrives and works as well here, and produces a silk of as good quality in all respects, as in any part of the world. The promoting the culture of silk, there­fore, had often been mentioned in that society, within the last year, as one of those public-spirited designs which it became them to promote. But it was not till the 5th of January last that they entered into a final resolution on that matter; upon a letter being laid before them from Dr. Franklin to one of the members, in answer to a letter which he had written to the Doctor on the same subject. A committee was then appointed by the society to frame a plan for promoting the culture of silk, and to prepare an address to the Honourable House of Assembly, praying some public encou­ragement of the design.

The letter and address are as follow, viz.

Extract of a Letter from BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Esq; to Doctor EVANS.

I SEND you a late French treatise on the management of silk-worms; it is said to be the best hitherto published, being written in the silk country by a gentlemen well ac­quainted with the whole affair. Some extracts from it, of the principal directions might be of use, if you would trans­late and publish them. I think the bounty is offered for silk from all the colonies in general—I will send you the act—But I believe it must be wound from the cocoons, and sent over in skains. The cocoons would spoil in the passage, by the dead worm corrupting and staining the silk. A public fila­ture should be set up for winding them there. In Italy they are all brought to market, from the neighbouring country, and bought up by those that keep the filature.

IF some provision were made by the Assembly for promoting [Page v] the growth of * mulberry-trees in all parts of the province, the culture of silk might afterwards follow easily: for the great discouragement to the breeding worms at first, is the difficulty of getting leaves, and the being obliged to go far for them.

THERE is no doubt with me, but that it might succeed in our country. It is the happiest of all inventions for cloath­ing. Wool uses a good deal of land to produce it, which is employed in raising corn, would afford much more sub­sistence for man, than the mutton amounts to. Flax and hemp require good land, impoverish it, and at the same time permit it to produce no food at all: but mulberry-trees may be planted in hedge-rows, in walks or avenues, or for shade near a house, where nothing else is wanted to grow. The food for the worms, who produce the silk, is in the air; and the ground under the trees may still produce grass, or some other vege­table, good for man or beast.—Then the wear of silken garments continues so much longer from the strength of the materials, as to give it greatly the preference. Thence it is that the most populous of all countries, China, clothes its inhabitants with silk, while it seeds them plentifully; and has besides a vast quantity both raw and manufactured to spare for exportation.

RAW silk here, in skains well wound, sells from twenty to twenty-five shillings per 1b. But if badly wound is not worth five shillings. Well wound is when the threads are made to cross each other every where in the skain, and only touch where they cross. Badly wound, is where they are laid par­rallel to each other; for so they are glued together, break in rewinding here, and take a vast deal of time more than the other, by losing the end every time the thread breaks.

*
It was thought that the Intention would be more effectually answered by giving the premiums and bounties on the silk raised, than on the trees planted; for the experience of a neighbouring government shews that a bounty on mul­berry-trees, though it may make people plant, yet it does not necessarily follow, that, because they have trees, they will raise silk-worms.

To the Honourable the Representatives of the Freemen of the Province of Pennsylvania, in General Assembly met;

The REPRESENTATION and PETITION of the American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, for promoting useful Knowledge, SHEWETH,

THAT on the 5th of January last, an extract of a let­ter from Dr. Franklin, their President, to Dr. Evans, [Page vi] (it is inserted above) was laid before the said society; recom­mending the culture of silk in this province, and setting forth some of the many advantages that would attend the same.

THAT the society, being truly sensible that it behoves the people of this province to forward every undertaking that will better employ its industrious inhabitants, especially the poor and their children, did appoint their committee for Ame­rican improvements, to prepare and lay before them a scheme for promoting the culture of silk, as what might be very be­neficial to the community, and employ many hands, whose industry could not be turned to any account more profitable to ourselves, or more acceptable to our mother country.

THAT the said committee, in pursuance of their trust, met frequently, and have taken due pains to inform themselves of the nature of the design, and the best method of prosecuting it, for which purpose the following scheme has been pro­posed by them, and approved by the society, viz.

THAT as this province, where the mulberry-tree is of spon­taneous growth, is well adapted for raising silk-worms, and what seems chiefly wanting to promote the culture of silk, is that cocoons or balls be made a ready merchantable commo­dity to all who choose to sell them, and that there be a cheap and easy method of winding them for those who choose to work up their silk for their own use; it is therefore proposed,

1. THAT a public filature be established at Philadelphia, and afterwards at such other places in the province as may be thought necessary, for winding the cocoons.

2. THAT proper managers of the filature be appointed, with power to employ a sit person or persons to wind, at rea­sonable rates, the cocoons of all those who may choose to work up their own silk, and to purchase and wind for the public account, all cocoons that may be offered for sale at the filature.

3. THAT to encourage all persons to cultivate mulberry­trees, raise silk-worms, and bring their cocoons to the filature, the managers be impowered and enabled to pay for cocoons, du­ring five years, the current price which cocoons of the like qua­lity sell for in Georgia; and as a further encouragement to pay at the rate of 25 per cent. on the value for all cocoons raised in this province, and brought to the filature; and, besides the above encouragement, it is proposed, as an inducement to raise large quantities of cocoons—to bestow the following yearly premiums, viz. for the year 1770, £15 to that person who shall raise and bring to the filature the greatest quantity of co­coons not less than 30,000, and £10 to that person who shall raise and bring the next greatest quantity not less than [Page vii] 20,000. In 1771, £15 for the greatest quantity not less than 40,000, and £10 for the next greatest quantity not less than 30,000. In 1772, £15 for the greatest quantity not less than 50,000, and £10 for the next greatest quantity not less than 40,000. In 1773, £15 for the greatest quantity not less than 60,000, and £10 for the next greatest quantity not less than 50,000; and in 1774, £15 for the greatest quan­tity not less than 70,000, and £10 for the next greatest quan­tity not less than 60,000. The above premiums are likewise to be limited to cocoons raised in this province. *

4. THAT to enable the managers to pay the aforesaid pre­miums, establish the filature, purchase cocoons and employ their servants, it seems necessary that a sum not less than £500 per annum should be appropriated during the aforesaid term of five years.

The society therefore pray,

THAT the Honourable House of Assembly, as the natural patrons of every scheme which requires the public counte­nance and assistance, would be pleased to nominate and ap­point proper Managers of this undertaking, with power to re­ceive out of the provincial treasury the aforesaid yearly sum in such proportions as may be necessary; and that all silk purchased and wound at the filature, on the account of this scheme together with the floss, be exposed to public sale from time to time, and the produce thereof, together with the mo­nies received for winding cocoons, be duly accounted for to such persons as may be appointed for that purpose, and remain in the stock for carrying on this design.

IF the society have the pleasure to find that this scheme meets with such encouragement from the House, that some progress is likely to be made therein, the ensuing season, it is proposed to write immediately to Georgia and Carolina for a quantity of the silk moths eggs, to distribute to such per­sons as may undertake to propagate silk-worms, all which is respectfully submitted.

  • THOMAS BOND, V. P.
  • SAMUEL RHOADS, V. P.
*

It hath been thought proper, since drawing up this Address, to extend the premiums to the adjacent provinces. See page xvi.

[Page viii] FROM the just sense which the Members of Assembly ap­peared to have of the utility of this scheme, there is reason to expect that they will soon find some means of placing it on a permanent footing; and the concurrence and assent of his Honor the GOVERNOR, in every proper way, cannot be doubted, from the countenance he hath already given to­wards it. And indeed this design is so far a happy one, that while it promises to be so advantageous to ourselves, it inter­feres with no commercial interest of the mother country, but on the contrary co-operates with the intention of the Parlia­ment, who have granted large premiums on all silk, the produce of the colonies, that may be imported into Great­Britain.

BUT as the Assembly, before their last adjournment, had not sufficient leisure to fix a fund for this design, and it being apprehended that if the ensuing season were suffered to pass, without doing something towards it, the present favourable disposition of the people might be abated, it was therefore resolved to make a beginning by subscription; and the liberal spirit shewn on that occasion does honor to the province, as will appear by the list of subscriptions hereunto annexed; which were made in a few days, and the following Mana­gers, and Treasurer, chosen, pursuant to the terms of the subscription, viz.—Dr. CADWALADER EVANS, ISRAEL PEMBERTON, BENJAMIN MORGAN, MOSES BARTRAM, Dr. FRANCIS ALISON, Dr. WILLIAM SMITH, JOHN RHEA, SAMUEL RHOADS, THOMAS FISHER, OWEN BIDDLE, HENRY DRINKER, ROBERT STRETTELL JONES, Managers. EDWARD PENNINGTON, Treasurer.

THE managers as soon as they were chosen applied them­selves with diligence and attention to the execution of their trust, keeping three objects principally in view, viz.

1. To remove the difficulties that have formerly stood in the way of those who have attempted the culture of silk in this province.

2. To co-operate with, and encourage the laudable spirit of those who may employ themselves in this way. And,

3. To give plain and useful directions for prosecuting the plan to the best advantage.

As to the first, it was considered that the principal discou­ragement had hitherto been the difficulty of reeling off the cocoons or balls, after being raised, so as to render the silk fit for private use, or for a market. Reeling properly is an art, only to be acquired by practice; and were every family to perform this part for themselves, it would be attended not only with much loss of time, but likewise with great loss and [Page ix] spoiling of their silk before they could become expert. A public filature, therefore, where this branch of the business is committed to persons properly instructed in the art of reeling the silk, and supplied with proper machines, hath been adopted in silk countries as the most advantageous method; and the managers have accordingly procured a proper house for a filature, and hope, in a short time, to have it furnished with the necessary machines and skilful persons to reel and wind cocoons, at reasonable rates for such as may apply to them.

As to the second article, the making the culture of silk profitable to all who may choose to turn it into merchandize, they will not only have the advantage above-mentioned, of having their cocoons well reeled; but, if they choose to sell, the prices that will be given at the filature, and the premiums proposed in the paper hereunto annexed, it is hoped, will be a sufficient inducement.

WITH respect to the last article, the giving such plain di­rections as might enable all, who may be so disposed, to pro­secute the business to the best advantage, the managers had but little left for them to do. One * of them had received from Dr. Franklin, with the letter above mentioned, some French treatises on the culture of silk wrote by the Abbe Boissier, which he immediately put into the hands of an inge­nious member of the American Philosophical Society residing at Burlington, requesting a translation of them. This task was readily undertaken by that member, and executed in a very judicious manner, though at the expence of considerable labor to himself, as will appear from the following account which he gives of the method he pursued, taken from his own letters of February 15th and March 2d, on that subject.

I am to beg your pardon for having so long delayed what, at your request, I undertook—the making a short collection of rules and observations from the four pamph­lets which our worthy friend Dr. Franklin transmitted to you for the instruction of our countrymen in the European method of breeding and managing silk-worms; and, in the next place, to request that this collection may be improved by such corrections and additions as you shall think re­quisite.

I found it would be an endless task to select passages to be translated. The Abbe is tedious, minute and philo­sophical—I therefore took this method—First I read over, with attention, one pamphlet after another; and then, while the subject was fresh in my memory, sat down and endeavoured to give in my own way, as briefly as possible, [Page x] an account of the most necessary rules, as hints for expe­rience to improve and correct.

J. ODELL

THAT there might be nothing wanting in the way of di­rections, four of the manager, collected from Pullein's treatise whatever might further elucidate the French treatises, or which proposed any different methods of doing any part of the work, in order that, on a comparison of both, experience might fix the best method at last. The Extracts from Pullein are added as an appendix.

THE managers are afraid that they shall be disappointed in the eggs of the silk-moth, which they expected from Georgia and Carolina. For though several gentlemen wrote to those provinces in February last for a supply, yet as the season is so far advanced they are apprehensive that the eggs may be hatched before they arrive, as hath been the case with some already sent from Carolina, notwithstanding all the care taken in pack­ing to keep them back. However a sufficient supply will be procured the next fall; and it is hoped, in the mean time, that there are eggs enough in this and the neighbouring provinces, to make full experiments during the ensuing summer, to con­vince every person that the culture of silk here may be ren­dered a very valuable addition to our staple commodities.—It may-be nevertheless prudent for every person to preserve a supply of their own eggs for the next year.

UPON the whole, the managers flatter themselves that the directions herewith given, and encouragement proposed, will be a sufficient inducement, for all who have the opportuni­ties, to consult their own interest and that of their country, in raising what silk they can, the ensuing season.

IT hath been observed, in a former publication; that where the mulberry-trees are convenient, two persons will attend and feed the worms produced from six ounces of eggs, until with­in ten or twelve days of the time they begin to spin; and that, during this last period, only four or five hands more (and those chiefly children) will be necessary to complete the labor. That quantity of eggs, in the silk countries commonly yields from 50 to 60 pounds of reeled silk, and in a favorable season more; the value of which, including the parliamenta­ry premium (which will be allowed in the price at the fi­lature) will be upwards of One Hundred Pounds—a sum which few of our farmers are able to raise from a plantation of two or three hundred acres. And yet to produce this in silk, as appears above, will only require the labor of two hands for the first three weeks, and but the labor of about six or [Page xi] seven hands (children included) for the last ten days; and all the food required for the worms necessary to raise this, may be produced from about sixty well-grown mulberry-trees, which may stand in hedge-rows, or any where near the dwel­ling-house, without much injury to the ground for other uses.

BUT suppo [...]ng 20,000 farmers in the province, and only one in ten should raise as many worms as could be supported by six mulberry-trees, and the attendance of one or two hands for about six weeks, Ten Pounds worth of silk for each plantation might be hereby produced, which would amount to twenty thousand pounds—a valuable addition to the com­modities of this province! And what ought to be a further incitement is this, that whenever the balls or cocoons are spun by the worm, those who choose to sell them will, by the present scheme, find a ready market at the filature, and have the money in hand to purchase necessaries for the harvest. From these considerations, and many more that might be ad­ded, the managers hope that their countrymen will exert themselves with their usual spirit, on the present occasion.

A LIST of the SUBSCRIBERS for promoting the CULTURE of SILK.
The Honourable JOHN PENN, Esquire, Governor of Pennsylvania, £20.

A
William Allen, Esq;£150
William Alison30
Dr. Francis Alison20
William Ashbridge20
Daniel Ashbridge20
Thomas Asheton20
William Allibone20
Matthias Aspden20
John Allen, Esq;20
Andrew Allen, Esq;20

B
Dr. Thomas Bond£30
James Biddle, Esq;20
Jonathan Brown20
David Beveridge20
Owen Biddle20
John Brown20
Jacob Barge20
Isaac Bartram20
Moses Bartram20
Philip Benezet£20
Barnaby Barnes20
Samuel Burge20
Clement Biddle20
Alexander Bartram20
John Bringhurst20
Andrew Bunner20
Abraham Bickley20
Samuel Bryan20
Thomas Bartow, jun.20
John Benezet20
Job Bacon20
Joseph Bullock20
Robert Bridges20
William Bradford20
John Bayard20
William Bettle20
Andrew Bankson20
James Budden20
George Bartram20
Thomas Bradford£20
Daniel Byrne20

C
John Cadwalader£60
Dr. Tho. Cadwalader30
John Cox, jun.30
Isaac Cox30
George Clymer210
Stephen Carmick20
Samuel Carsan20
W. Cliffton, Southwark20
Thomas Clifford20
Joseph Carsan20
John Correy20
Dr. Gerardus Clarkson20
Samuel Caldwell20
Andrew Caldwell20
Stephen Collins20
William Craig20
Peter Chevalier20
Thomas Coombe20
Curtis Clay20
Daniel Clymer, Esq;20
John Chevalier20
James Craig110
Thomas C [...]nby10

D
Henry Drinker£50
Jacob Duche, jun.30
Andrew Doz30
John Drinker, jun.30
William Drewry20
David Deshler20
Samuel Davis20
Edward Duffield20
Dr. Samuel Duffield20
Jacob Duche, Esq;20
Sharp Delaney20
Joseph Dean20
Peter Dehaven20
Dr. John Day115
James Davidson10
Arthur Donaldson10

E
Samuel Emlen, jun.£40
Dr. Cadwalader Evans30
Joel Evans20
Adam Ekart20
George Emlen, sen.20
Richard Edwards20
George Emlen, jun.20
Robert Erwin20
Samuel Emlen10

F
Joseph Fox, Esq;£50
Soshua Fisher50
David Franks30
Caleb Foulke20
Thomas Fisher20
Samuel Fisher20
Thomas Foxcrost20
Benjamin Fuller20
John Fullerton20
George Fullerton20
William Fishbourne20
William Fisher20
Plunket Fleeson20
Turbut Francis, Esq;20
Moore Furman20

G
Jos. Galloway, Esq;£100
John Gibson, Esq;30
Isaac Greenlease30
Benjamin Gibbs210
Walter Goodman20
Isaac Gray20

H
Ja. Hamilton, Esq;£150
Henry Hill50
William Hamilton, Esq;50
John Head50
Richard Hockley, Esq;30
David Hall30
Sam. Howell, Merchant30
Joshua Howell30
Adam Hubley20
Joseph Hilborne20
William Henry20
Jacob Harman20
Benjamin Harbeson£20
Micheal Hillegas, Esq;20
Reuben Haines20
Isaac Hazelhurst20
John W. Hoffman20
John Hunter20
Jacob Hiltzheimer20
Josiah Hewes20
Francis Hammitt20
Jonathan Humphreys20
James Humphreys, Esq;10
Joseph Howell10
William Henderson10

I
R. Strettell Jones£30
Francis Johnson210
William Jackson20
Daniel Joy20
Owen Jones,20
James Irvine20
Edward Jones20
John Inglis20
James Johnston20
Dominick Joyce20
Levi Hollingsworth20
William Jones20
John Johnston110

K
Frederick Kuhl£30
Reynold Keen30
Philip Kinsey20
Abraham Kentzing20
John Kaighn20
Peter Knight20
Benjamin Kendall20
Henry Keppele20
Dr. John Kearsley, jun.20

L
Lynford Lardner, Esq;£60
william Logan, Esq;50
Benjamin Loxley30
Alexander Lunan20
Ellis Lewis20
James Logan20
Robert Lewis20
Tho. Livezey, Esq;£20
Abraham Liddon20
John Lukens, Esq;20
John Lownes20
Samuel Lewis20
Jacob Lewis20
James Loughead110

M
Anth. Morris, sen.£90
George Meade50
Dr. Samuel P. Moore50
Archobald M'Call50
Benjamin Morgan50
Janathan Mifflin50
Samuel Morton40
Samuel Miles30
Robert Morris30
William Moore30
Stephen Moylan30
Dr. Charles Moore30
John Mifflin30
Cadwalader Morris20
John Mitchell20
Matthew Mease20
Anthony Morris, jun.20
Edward Milnor20
Joseph Mather20
Christian Minnick20
John Morris20
Peter Miller20
James Mease20
Thomas Murgatoryd20
Samuel Mifflin, Esq;20
James Maccubbin20
Jesse Maris20
Thomas Mifflin20
Levy Marks20
John Morton20
John Morris, Esq;20
Christ. Marshall, jun.20
Anthony C. Morris20
Samuel Morris, jun.20
Joseph Morris20
Alexander Mackrabie20
Blair M' Clenachan20
M'Neil and Tolbert£20
Dr. John Morgan20
William Morrell110

N
Samuel Neave£50
John Nixon30
Richard Neave jun.20
Samuel Noble20
Conyngham & Nesbit30

P
Israel Pemberton£100
Dr. Richard Peters60
James Pemberton, Esq;50
John Pemberton50
Joseph Pemberton30
Charles Pemberton30
Samuel Pleasants30
Thomas Pryor30
Edward Penington30
James Penrose20
William Pusey20
Stephen Paschall20
Richard Peters, Esq;20
Isaac Parrish20
Thomas Penrose20
Samuel Purviance20
William Parr, Esq;20
Thomas Paschall20
Joseph Paul20
Jonathan Paul20
Jacob Paul20
William Pollard20
Dr. Frederick Phile20
John Phillips20
John Pringle20
Samuel Powell20
Edward Pole20
James Pearson20
Isaac Paschall20
Joseph Paschall20
Joseph Penrose20
John Paul20

R
John Reynell£50
William Richards50
John Rhea£30
Sam. Rhoads, Esq;30
Joseph Richardson, Esq;30
Hugh Roberts30
John Ross, Esq;30
William Rush30
George Roberts20
Dr. Benjamin Rush20
James Reynolds20
Abraham Robinson20
Robert Ri [...]chie20
Joseph Russell20
James Rose20
Peter Reeve20
Francis Richardson20
John Ross, Merchant20
John Roberts, miller20
Benjamin Rawle20
James Read20
Samuel Rhoads, jun.20

S
Sa. Shoemaker, Esq;£30
Dr. William Smith30
Stephen Shewell30
John Swift, Esq;30
Philip Syng30
William Standley210
Joanthan Smith20
William Smith, broker20
Joseph Sermon20
John Stamper, Esq;20
Joseph Stamper20
Joseph Sims20
Samuel Sansom, jun.20
Samuel Smith, jun.20
George Schlosser20
John Shoemaker20
William Sitgreaves20
John Shee20
Buckridge Sims20
Joseph Swift20
Capt. Thomas Smith20
Walter Shee20
Bertles Shee20
Joseph Saunders20
Thomas Say£20
Charles Starten20
Jacob Shoemaker, jun.20
Dr. Wm. Shippen, jun.20
Peter Stretch20
Edw. Shippen, jun. Esq;20
William Shute110

T
Godfrey Twells£20
Tench Tilghman20
Robert Towers20
Charles Thompson20
Andrew Tybout20
Robert Taggatt20

V
John Vanderen£20
Abraham Usher20

W
Jos. Wharton, sen.£100
Jacob Winey50
Thomas Willing, Esq;30
Jeremiah Warder30
William West30
Nicholas Waln, Esq;30
Robert Waln30
Charles West30
Benjamin Wynkoop£210
Tho. Wharton, jun.20
William Wishart20
Isaac Wharton20
Bryan Wilkinson20
Thomas West20
Philip Wilson20
John Wharton20
James Wharton20
John White20
James Worrall20
Alex. Wilcocks, Esq;20
William Wister20
John Wood20
Isa. Whitelock, Lancaster20
William White20
Joseph Watkins, jun.20
Richard Waln20
Joseph Wharton, jun.20
Uriah Woolman20
Richard Wister20
John Wilday20
John Wilcocks20
Lewis Weiss20
Daniel Williams119
Charles Wharton10
[Page]

TO the PUBLIC.

THE rates will be speedily published in the New-papers, at which cocoons or balls will be reeled at the filature in Philadelphia, and also the price which the managers will give for all cocoons brought to them for sale, whether produced in this Province or the adjacent ones, or whether from the American or Italian silk-worm.

OVER and above the price, which will be the full amount of what such cocoons could be sold for in any part of America, the managers are impowered, as a further encouragment to the inhabitants of this Province, to pay them £25 per cent on the value of all cocoons that may be purchased from them.

The following PREMIUMS will likewise be given.

I. TO that person in Pennsylvania, or in the three lower counties on Delaware, or in the Jersies or Maryland, who shall, on or before the first day of September next, raise within his or her family, and sell at the filature, the greatest quantity of sound cocoons, not less than thirty thousand, the premium of FIFTEEN POUNDS.

II. TO that person, in either of the said provinces, or counties, who shall raise and sell as aforesaid, the next greatest quantity, not less than twenty thousand, the premium of TEN POUNDS. Both these pre­miums exclusive of the price as aforesaid.

THE managers will notify in the News-papers, in due time, the manner in which persons, claiming the premiums, must bring their proofs that the cocoons were raised in their own family.

[Page]

DIRECTIONS FOR THE BREEDING AND MANAGEMENT OF SILK-WORMS, &c.

SECTION I.
Of the Silk-worms Eggs.

1. AT first their colour is a pale yellow. Within five or six days after they are laid, this colour changes by degrees to a darker; and then those eggs are said to be of the best sort, which are of a grey ash-colour, inclining to a tarnished purple. If the first co­lour continues unchanged, it is a certain mark that the eggs are unimpregnated and barren.

2. THE best eggs may be spoiled, by a stifled heat, by a moist air, by being pent up in tight vessels, or by being amas­sed together in any considerable quantities. The eggs, which are spoiled by any of these means, turn either to a whitish or a brown colour; and, either they do not crack under the nail, and are so light as to swim in water; or else, when they are cracked, their liquor is fluid and watry, which ought to be slimy and thick.

3. To prevent these evils, keep your eggs (as they are first laid) upon separate pieces of rag or paper, and in a dry fresh air. In this manner they may be sent to any distance, with a cover, in form of a letter; only taking care, that, if several pieces are put into one packet, they be kept from rubbing together by slips of rag or paper laid between them.

4. FROM the time that your eggs are laid, till you set them to hatch, they should be kept from the two extremes of heat and cold. As soon, therefore, as they are laid, put them away in the coolest place you can find about the house, or in the cellar; only taking care that they be not stifled by a damp or a confined air, nor exposed to be devoured by mice or other [Page 2] vermin: if your cellar therefore be damp or close, you must choose some other place. And, to secure them from vermin, you may put them in a large basket, covered at the top with a thin linen cloth, and suspended by a string from the cieling. When the cold weather sets in and threatens frost, you may move them into a room where you keep a constant fire, and hang them up, as before, but at a good distance from the fire. The room should be large, and the cieling pretty high; for they do not require a greater warmth than about ten de­grees above freezing. And, indeed, a very strong frost would not kill the worm in the egg; but the inconveniencies, arising from the eggs having been so chilled, are, that such eggs can not easily be made to hatch together, nor at the proper season; unless you force them by such a degree of heat as, by the sudden perspiration it occasions in the egg, enfeebles or per­haps destroys the worm. As the spring approaches, if the weather should turn unseasonably warm, remove your eggs again to a cool place.

5. LASTLY, Keep your eggs always clean, and free from every kind of fat or oily substances.

SECTION II.
Of hatching the Silk-worms Eggs.

AS I must all along endeavour to adapt the directions and observations of my author to our own climate, the reader will please to consider what I say to be often no more than hints and conjectures, which can only be tried by experience. And yet I hope those hints may be of use in directing us to the knowledge of such experiments as are ne­cessary to be made, and in what manner to make them.

THE eggs, if properly preserved, according to the directions given in the first Section, would, without more ado, as the spring advances, be hatched by the natural warmth of the season. But, in every country where the breeding of silk­worms is well understood, the people have been taught, by long experience, that in this affair nature requires the assist­ance of art. Accordingly, in China, in Persia, in Italy, France and Spain, they avail themselves of artificial means in the hatching of these beneficial insects, and indeed in the breeding and management of them through every stage of their existence. At first, we may be apt to imagine that here, as in most other instances, art is not so good a nurse as nature; and that, in their own country and climate at least, silk­worms would do best if left to shift for themselves in the open [Page 3] air. But the fact is far otherwise. There is no country where they can be rendered profitable to man, but by the means of artificial management. If they were to be left abroad upon the trees, they would become the pray of birds, flies and other insects.

BUT, to return from this digression, the two principal things to be regarded in the hatching of silk-worms, are the time when, and the manner how.

I. WITH respect to the time, if the season were uniform, an infalliable rule might be given, which would be, that the worms ought to come out with the first appearance of the mulberry leaf, which is to be their only food. If they come out sooner, they must starve. * It has been thought, indeed, that [...]ettice, and perhaps some other leaves might in cases of necessity be used as a substitute for the mulberry leaves; [...] experience has decided against this opinion. For though you may, by such means, save the lives of the worms for a while, yet, unless they are fed with that food which nature has de­stined for their use, and which therefore is alone proper to furnish that gum from which the silk is made, it were better to spare yourself the fruitless pains. and to let them die at once. If their hatching, on the other hand, be delayed till the leaves upon which they are to feed have got considerably forward in their growth, then the worms lose one great ad­vantage, which is the feeding at first upon young and tender leaves, which are fittest for their infant state, and contribute greatly to their future health and vigour. And, besides, by the time that they have got through their last moulting, they will be much injured by a food that is grown too dry and of too hard a texture, and still more by the close air and stifling heat of summer. It is therefore of importance to have the worms come out as early in the spring as may be, without exposing them to the danger of wanting food. But it fre­quently happens, especially in this country, that a too forward spring brings out young leaves which are soon after suddenly killed by a nipping frost; and, in that case, it will be often fifteen, and sometimes twenty days, before a second crop of leaves are put out.

THERE is an Indian proverb which says, that "the winter seldom rots in the sky:" the meaning of which is obvious, that sooner or later we must expect to feel our share of cold.

[Page 4] And the converse of this observation is also true, that if, in the winter months, the cold has been pretty constant and uniform, the winter then will seldom usurp the place of spring. When the season, therefore, has been thus regular, there will be little or no danger in setting your eggs to hatch as soon as the mulberry buds begin to swell. But if the spring appears to be too forward, you run a risk either way: if you hatch your eggs, and a frost should happen to nip the tender leaves in the bud, you lose your worms; and if you keep back your eggs for fear of the frost, and no frost should happen, then your worms will come too late for their food, and will have to struggle with the sultry suffocating heats of the ad­vancing season. Now, if the buds, by putting out too early, should happen to be nipped by the frost, the second crop will come so much later that there will then be no reason to fear the like accident again for that season. Upon the whole, therefore, it will be safest to keep such a quantity of eggs as that you may divide them into two parcels, and let the sea­son be as it may, have one of the parcels ready to hatch with the first appearance of the leaf; then, if their food should be killed, you may have the second parcel ready against the leaves put out anew. It may be, all thing considered, a good [...]conomy to submit to the loss of half the eggs that you keep, or which is the same thing, to be at the expence of keeping double the quantity of eggs that will be wanted, rather than run the risque of losing the labour and expecta­tion of a whole season.

THESE hints may serve to direct the attentive observer in ascertaining the proper time for hatching the silk-worms eggs. It remains to show.

2. THE manner of bringing them to hatch at the time re­quired. It is needless to say, that this cannot be done, with any degree of certainty, by trusting them to the natural warmth of the season, which would often bring out the worms too soon, and as often, perhaps, keep them back too long. For this reason, therefore, (and, indeed, for several others with which I need not detain the reader) it is necessa­ry to follow the directions given in the first Section, keeping your eggs in a moderately cool air, till the time indicated in the foregoing article; and then to hatch them by means of such a heat as it is, at all times, in your power to regulate at pleasure.

IN Europe it has been a very general practice to do this by means of the natural warmth of the human body. They put a quantity of eggs into a line [...]rag tied up with a string; and begin by putting this little bundle into some clean dry straw [Page 5] at the foot of the bed at night, and by wearing it pinned un­der their outward garments in the day-time. Then by degrees they give the eggs a greater heat, by putting the bundles first into bed at their feet, and so gradually bringing them to lie on their breast at night, and to be worn next to the skin by day. But I shall not give a minute detail of this method, be­cause it is liable to many objections. The two grand requi­sites in the management of silk-worms from first to last are, to keep them, both while they are in the eggs and afterwards, in a dry air, and free from a close stifled heat. In the method just now mentioned, therefore, a constant attention and a pain­ful vigilance are absolutely necessary, in order to guard against the dangers arising from the insensible perspiration of the bo­dy, and from the eggs being too closely pent up in a suffocat­ing kind of warmth. They are obliged every now and then, both by day and by night, to open the bundle of eggs, spread them about for a while, and then tie them up again and re­turn them into their place. When the worms are on the eve of coming out, they dare not trust themselves to sleep, left their nap should be too long; for one hour's neglect might hazard the loss of more than half their labour. It might be produc­tive of such a sickly brood as would hardly be worth the pains of nursing.

ANOTHER, and a far preferable method, has therefore been attempted with success, which is to hatch the eggs by the heat of common fire. The manner of putting this method in practice may be varied according as fancy or convenience shall direct, and experience shall approve. The Abbe Boissier, whose book has been my chief instructor, directs a stove, or rather a small hot-house, to be built for this purpose. It is about six feet wide, and fifteen feet long, built of brick and covered with tile, and has a fire-place in each end, a door in one side, and a small window, which is closed by a sliding shutter, to be opened occasionally. In order to keep up, as near as may be, a steady equal heat, he puts every morning a quantity of tanner's bark, well dried in the sun, into each fire-place; this bark he disposes in an even heap from jamb to jamb, and kindles it at one end with a shove­ful of burning coals. It burns slowly and constantly, and you may put on enough at one time to serve for twenty-four hours. If tanner's bark cannot be had, you may use cow­dung, turf, sea-coal, &c. instead of it.

THE stove being ready, the next thing to be done is, to pro­vide a small table or table, upon which you may spread your eggs. This may be a thin piece of well-seasoned board, planed smooth, with a [...]dge on the edges about half an inch higher than [Page 6] the surface of the board, which is to be covered with a lining of clean brown paper; or, instead of a board, it might be made with splinters or smooth twigs, like the cover of a square bas­ket. Strew this smoothly over with a layer of clean cut straw, and upon that lay the brown paper as before. The size of this tablet should at least be such as that a layer of eggs, when spread upon the paper, may not be more than one quarter of an inch thick. At each corner of the tablet fasten a string, and make the strings meet in a knot at a convenient height above the tablet. When your eggs are properly spread, sus­pend the tablet on a hook at the end of a string which slides above, by a loop, upon a smooth rod that runs overhead length­ways of the stove. By this means you can move the tablet from the middle towards either fire-place, as occasion may require. Let the tablet hang at the distance of three or four feet from the ground. To secure your eggs from the dust and other nuisances, make a small hole in the middle of a square piece of thin linen cloth; slip it up a few inches above the hook upon the sliding string, and let the edges of the cloth fall down round the edges of the tablet; by which means your eggs will be covered without being stifled; for the cloth, hanging loosely round, will leave a free communication for the air to circulate, and for the imperceptible steam, that rises by perspiration from the eggs, to escape.

IN order to proceed with certainty, it will be advisable to furnish yourself with a thermometer, which may be fixed fast in the middle of the tablet, and the eggs spread round it. As it is not necessary to be very nice in marking the degrees of heat, the Abbé advises the use of a thermometer which is very readily adjusted, and may be understood with equal ease by every one. And, for the sake of those who are not fond of hard words, he calls it a regulator. It is adjusted in the fol­lowing manner. Take any low-priced thermometer, and cover the bulb with snow or broken ice, so as to bring the mercury (or the liquor) down to the point of freezing; at this point tie a thread round the tube for a mark, then put the bulb into your mouth, or in your bosom, so as to raise the mercury to the degree of a blood-heat; mark this point with another thread tied round the tube. Call this last point 32 degrees. The middle point between this and the point of freezing will be 16. Divide the space between 16 and 32 into four equal parts, mark them, and they will be as many divisions as are necessary. Thus you will have marks for the following degrees, 16. 20. 24. 28. and 32. Instead of a gra­duated scale with figures, make a mark against each of the points thus ascertained, on the slip of board that your ther­mometer [Page 7] is fixed to. Let the marks be coarse lines drawn across, and in different colours, as black, red, yellow, green and blue. And then you have only to direct, that in such and such circumstances, the mercury (or which amounts to the same thing, the heat) must be kept at such or such a mark black or red, &c. or between the two. For a greater preci­sion is not necessary, nor will you need any graduation lower than 16 nor higher than 32 degrees above the point of freezing.

WITH this apparatus once completed, the rest is easy. For the first two or three days you have only to keep the heat at about 16 or 18 degrees; it will gradually rise to 24 and 28 as the walls get heated, without increasing the fire. And at this point you may let it remain, till nearly two thirds of your eggs are hatched; when it will be advisable to give the remainder a heat of about 32 degrees, at least for a few hours, in order to hasten the hatching, and to bring out your whole brood as nearly together as may be.*

THREE or four times a day will be sufficient to turn your eggs, which is done by raking them up into heaps, and then immediately spreading them again, and at night there will be no inconvenience in letting the fire go down a little, as you will thus be less apprehensive of accidents.

EGGS that have been well wintered will hatch by this pro­cess, in about nine or ten days. You may know when they are near hatching by their turning of a paler colour, which usually happens on the seventh or eighth day.

3. As soon as you perceive your eggs beginning to hatch, and that some of the worms are already come out, it is time to brush the whole from the tablet into a box, which you must have ready made, of thin light boards (or into a flat square basket) about three inches deep, and lined with soft paper. In this box or basket (which may be in size about half that of the tablet) you spread the eggs in an even layer not more than half an inch thick. Then you cover the eggs all over with a thin light mat of tow loosely pressed flat, and over this mat you lay a leaf of gauze, or rather paper pierced through with a number of small holes, to give a passage for the worms, who always climb through to the top of what­ever covers them. When this paper is pretty well covered [Page 8] with worms, you take it up from the mat, brush off the worms with a feather, deposit them apart to be taken care of as shall be hereafter directed, and then return the paper to [...] place till it is covered again, repeating these removes till all the worms are come out.

THE reason of this apparatus is, that the worms, as soon as they are hatched, begin to spin a very fine thread of silk, which they fasten to any thing that happens to be next to them. Thus a number of eggs are tied together, and the thread of one worms gets entangled with that of another. When the worms have passed through the mat, and are crawling upon the paper which lies upon it, removing the paper without moving the mat, breaks all those threads, and makes it easy, without danger or embarrassment, to separate the worms, as they come out, from the bottom, without moving the eggs that are behind. If you have managed with care and address, your worms will all be out in two, or at most, in three days from the time of their beginning to hatch.

4. THIS process may, perhaps, appear tedious in descrip­tion; but in practice it will be sound easy. And I doubt not but some particulars, which have been here described, might be dispensed with; especially when the quantity of eggs to be hatched is small. For instance, instead of a stove built on purpose, any small room might be made to answer the end. Was it not so absolutely necessary to guard against a close suf­focating air, a room with a Dutch stove would serve, beyond any other contrivance, for keeping up an equable degree of warmth; but then you could not have any change of circu­lating air. Perhaps a room with a small cannot stove in each end might answer every purpose; for, by that means, you might have a steady warmth, and yet the air in the room would be gradually changed. And as to a thermometer, though it would certainly be very useful, yet I fancy one might venture to do without it. A little experience would give one a habit of judging pretty nearly of those degrees of warmth which are requisite; and it is certain that, when the eggs have the benefit of a free circulating dry air, they will, without hazard, endure a degree of heat which in other circumstances would be pernicious.

5. WITH regard to the quantity of eggs to be set, it may be worth observing that the smaller your brood is, the greater, in proportion, is your harvest of cocoons or silk balls. An ounce of eggs is called a very small quantity; this yield with good management, one hundred weight of cocoons; and from ten or fifteen ounces, you seldom reap more than fifty pounds of cocoons for every ounce of eggs. The reason of this [Page 9] difference is doubtless this, that a small brood is more easily tended, and enjoys a sweeter air, than a large one; and is therefore less liable to be hurt by sickness and other disasters.

6. I OBSERVE, that, in a late article in the Pennsylvania Gazette, we are encouraged to expect from our climate the advantage of raising two broods of worms in one season. But I find this matter, upon repeated trials, given up in the south of France, and in most parts of Italy, where the climate is at least as favourable to such an attempt as it can be imagined to be in our country.

IF the season when the eggs are laid happens to be pretty warm, it is, indeed, common enough to observe a small num­ber of worms come out in eight or ten days after. But, even supposing the whole quantity could be brought to hatch (which would be very difficult, if not impossible) yet as great a difficulty would remain in the procuring them food; for the leaves which would have put out a second, or perhaps a third time in the same season, would be mostly too much grown for the young insects to begin to feed on them; and, besides, such a frequent stripping of the trees would greatly damage their future growth and fertility. I speak not this with a design to damp the ardour of any one in the prosecuting so valuable an article among those which this country is fitted to produce; but to guard against the misleading of the reader into a too sanguine expectation, which would in the end only serve to vex and discourage him by a disagreeable expence of fruitless labour.

I WOULD, therefore, still recommend it as the safest way, to follow the method pointed out in the first Section, as soon as the eggs are laid, to put them away in the coolest place you can find about the house; and then, if any worms should happen to come out, it may not be amiss to amuse yourself with taking them up, and trying to make the most of their premature and unpromising labours.

7. THE reader will observe, that many of the directions that have already been given, and of those which are to fol­low, may be partly dispensed with, when the brood is very small: but when it is proposed to raise a brood of any conse­quence, it will not only be more necessary, but it will also be very well worth while, to spare no pains, nor any moderate expence, in order to secure success. It cannot surely be necessary to use arguments with my countrymen, to prevail on them to endeavour in earnest to reap so great an advantage, as the produce of silk, from the climate in which we live. It is presumed, and that upon very good grounds, that nothing is at present wanted, but a sufficient stock of mul­berry [Page 10] berry-trees (which may soon be propagated) to secure to us a plenty of this most valuable and useful commodity.

SECTION III.
Of the several ages of the Silk-worms.

THE life of this precious insect, while it continues in the form of a worm or caterpillar, is divided into five periods or ages; the first age is the time included between the hatching of the egg and the first moulting or casting of the skin; the second age is terminated by a second moulting; the third and fourth ages by a third and fourth moulting; and the fifth age by the worm's beginning to spin that web in which it wraps itself as in a second egg. There it undergoes a kind of temporary death, from which it soon revives in its sixth age with a new form, and comes out a moth-fly. To this last stage of its existence nature puts a final period, as soon as the necessary provision is made for the propagation of the species.

SECTION IV.
Directions how to manage during the first, second, and third ages.

1. AT each remove that you make of the new-hatched worms, according to the directions given in the se­cond Section, you deposite them apart to be taken care of. For this end you must have in readiness a sufficient number of tablets, like that already described, with ledges of two inches height, and the bottom covered with brown paper. They may be about three feet long and eighteen inches wide. Upon these tablets the young insects are to be deposited, be­ginning at one end, and spreading them thin upon the bottom from side to side, and giving them immediately a mess of young and tender leaves shreded small and strewed over them. Thus you proceed till one tablet is full, and covered with leaves, strewed over the worms, from end to end; and then go on [...]n like manner to a second (if need be) and a third tablet, until all your eggs are hatched, and the worms properly disposed of.

2. THE reason of directing them to be fed at this time is, not only to satisfy their present appetite, but chiefly to prevent their crawling over the ledges of their tablet, and so losing themselves. The small fibres of the leaves remain, and make [Page 11] a litter, which the worms will never desert, unless attracted by fresh leaves, and in one or two other circumstances which will be noted hereafter.

3. IT is of great importance to have the worms conducted so as that they may grow equally, and go through each moult­ing nearly at the same time. With a small quantity this may easily be done; but if your brood be very numerous, it will not be so easy to keep them equal. In this case, therefore, it is best to divide your stock into classes, making the first class to consist of those worms which come out on the first day of hatching; the second class to be levied the second day; and so on. The classes, thus made, will never be more than three; because, if you have managed with care and discretion, your worms will be all out on the second or, at farthest, on the third day; and indeed, if it should happen that any remain to be hatched after that time, it will never be worth while to raise them; they would only prove a useless embarrassment, and therefore it were best to throw them away.

4. THEN, in order to make those of a class to thrive equally, you bring forward the less thrifty, by giving them one or two degrees of warmth more than you give the rest. This will increase their appetite, which must be supplied accordingly; and thus, in two or three days, with skill and attention, the worms of a class may be brought to such an equality as will make all the future management regular and easy. They will go through their several ages without confusion, will moult all on the same days, and be ready to spin all together; and the several classes will keep a regular distance one from another.

5. TO render this management easily practicable, each class should be subdivided upon different tablets, which may be exposed to greater or less degrees of heat as occasion shall require.

6. A GREAT deal depends upon the choice of a proper room for the nursery of silk-worms. The chief requisites in such a room are these—1st, It should be dry and sheltered from easterly winds; 2d, it should be so situated as to admit, occa­sionally, a draught of cool fresh air, which is best when it comes through a long entry that is kept clean and dry; 3d, it should have at least one fire-place; 4th, the cieling should be high, and either not so tight as to confine the air, or else there should be an opening in it like a trap-door, to let the air circulate freely, and prevent a stifling kind of warmth; it is best when this trap-door opens into a garret or another cham­ber overhead; 5th, the sides of the room should be tight; and, lastly, it should be kept dark, except when you have occasion to visit and examine the nursery.

[Page 12]

7. In such a room, the warmer your brood is kept, the better it will thrive. The life of a silk-worm may be abridged or prolonged, within a certain compass, almost at pleasure. The faster they eat, the faster they live; and their appetite is always in proportion to the degree of warmth in which they live, provided it be not a stifled warmth; and they should always be fed in proportion to their appetite. Thus, by duly regulating the heat, you may either bring these insects to the end of their fifth age in less than five and twenty days, or you may make them live fourscore. A middle way is the least liable to accidents; it is therefore adviseable, during the first three days, to give them a warmth of about 30 or 32 degrees; and for the rest of their life, about 24 or 26 degrees.*

8. DURING the three first ages, they should be fed six or eight times a day, shreding the leaves small at first, and cutting them into larger pieces in proportion as the worms grow bigger. Each mess of food is to be strewed equally over them, and a new mess should not be given till the last is devoured.

9. CARE should be taken not to let the litter grow too thick, and once in two or three days to remove it, and keep the worms, by this means, upon clean tablets; with this addi­tional caution, that if they are crouded, they should be al­lowed more room, by making two tablets contain those who at first were spread upon one,—To enter into a minute detail of the methods commonly used in these cases would be tedious: I shall therefore leave them to the fancy and fagacity of the reader to choose for himself.

10. WHEN the worms are near moulting, their appetite al­ways increases, and therefore, the quantity of food in each mess should be proportionably augmented. This ravenous appetite returns in every age, some time before the moulting in the four first ages, and before the spinning in the last age. On the decline of this voracity, the worms begin to acquire a degree of transparency; they are turgid, and ready to cast their skin. And then you stop feeding them, and take care immediately to give them a clean tablet. If you delay to do this, you must not move them at all; for no sooner do they cease eating than they begin to prepare for moulting. This they do by fastening themselves to the bottom of their tablet by fine threads of silk, that so, their old skin being tied down, they may with the more ease crawl out of it. And, therefore, [Page 13] to move them after this is begun would hazard their suffocation.

11. THE moulting of a whole class should be finished in thirty hours, or less; and if any remain that have not moulted in that time, it is best, either to throw them away, or else to make a small class of them apart from the rest. By thirty hours, I mean from the time of their beginning to moult, which, with the degree of warmth mentioned in the seventh article of this Section, will be about the ninth day from the worms coming out of the eggs. On this occasion, if there be room at the sides of the tablet, they are apt to quit the lit­ter, and betake themselves to the first clear spot that offers for fastening themselves down, against the crisis comes on in which they are to languish a while, and then to renew their vigour by crawling out of their old skin.

12. ONE caution more, with regard to seeding the worms, should be remembered; and that is, for a day or two after each moulting, to give them young and tender leaves; and, at all times, to be careful that the leaves on which they feed the dry; that is, free from the moisture that arises either from the dew or from showers of rain.

SECTION V.
Direction how to manage during the fourth and fifth ages.

1. THE hints, given in the last Section, may serve to di­rect the attentive reader in the most material things necessary to be observed during the three first ages; and several rules already laid down must be attended to in every age. In this Section, therefore, I shall only mention a few things which are requisite in the two last ages, but were unnecessary in the proeceding ones.

2. HITHERTO the worms have been kept upon tablets, which were handy and easily moved, into a cooler or a warmer birth, as occasion might require. But now the worms are so much grown, that you must place them upon larger tables, which need not be moveable. In the construction of these tables, it may be worth while to have an eye to those accommodations which will be useful when the worms are to be ser a spinning. The apparatus, which I am going to describe, may perhaps be more complex than is always necessary; but it will be found very convenient where you can afford it, and especially when your brood is numerous; besides, in the execution of it, the [Page 14] construction will be found easier than it may appear in the description.

3. WITH pieces of joice three inches square, make a stand­ing frame, which may be put together, like a bedstead, with cross and side pieces, of the same thickness, running level from post to post all round, at about three feet from the floor. If your frame is twelve feet long, you must have one middle­post in each side, and more, in proportion, if it be longer. Each pair of these middle posts must be connected, like the corner ones, by a cross-piece, or inter-tie, running from one to the other. Thus the inter-ties will divide your frame lengthways into equal spaces of six feet each, the thickness of the inter-ties included. The inter-ties, at each end of the frame, and from one middle-post to another, must be let into the posts one inch higher than the side-pieces. Between every two of these inter-ties let in three more, to rest, at equal distances, upon the side-pieces, by a shoulder of one inch thick. Thus there will be laid, the whole length of your frame, an even floor of joice, running from side to side, and leaving an interval of fifteen inches between every two. Let this floor be now completed by slipping in (between each pair of joice) a board, one inch thick, fifteen inches wide, and in leng [...]ual to the width of the frame from out to out, so as to fi [...] [...] every interval; this floor will be about three feet from the ground, Eighteen or twenty inches higher, frame in a second, in all respects like the former; at a like distance above the second, put a third, and so on to the top of your frame.

THESE floors, or stages, one above another, are to serve as tablets, upon which, after the third moulting, you are to spread your worms, taking care to leave a clear margin, fifteen inches wide, all along each side; for, as the worms grow bigger, they will want more room. If you had nothing far­ther in view than the present use of such of frame of tables, it might have been much more simply constructed, and, in particular, without such a number of inter-ties; but the farther utility of the construction here described will appear in the next Section. It now only remains to fix the dimensions of this frame. This must be done by considering the quantity of worms that you breed, and the size of the room which you select for a nursery. Let the frame, then, be always about six feet wide; as long as the room will admit, leaving a free passage round, at each end as well as at the sides; and high enough (if your brood be numerous) to reach from the floor to within one foot or two of the cieling.

[Page 15] OBSERVE, That the joice are to be laid in every stage alike; but, in the uppermost, the intervals are to be left open; no worms are to be spread upon this stage, but the inter-ties are to serve a purpose which will be explained hereafter.

4. HITHERTO you have been directed, in feeding the worms, to cut or shred the leaves into pieces, in proportion to the size of the worms; but now, they are so grown, and they eat so much, that this caution is no longer necessary, and would be fatiguing. Give them the leaves whole as they are plucked from the trees, only remembering, as directed in the 12th article of the former Section, to serve them, at first after moulting, with the youngest and tenderest leaves you have, and take care that their food be not wet. The quantity given them should always be gradually increased from day to day, after each moulting, as has been already observed, till their appetite is come to its height: during this voracious period, in the fifth age, they devour twice as much food as in all the other ages put together. At this time their food should consist of leaves that have got their full growth, but are not yet begun to turn hard and husky.

5. SILK-WORMS are liable to be sickly, and it may be thought of importance to give a description of their diseases; but they are much more easily prevented than cured; and to describe a distemper, without pointing out a method of cure, would be to little purpose. If the worms are kept clean, are not crowded too much together, are properly fed, and secured against the pernicious effects of a close damp air, and a stifled heat; there is no great danger of their being visited with any kind of sickness: during the fourth and fifth ages, especi­ally, it is of importance to guard against this last inconveni­ence, a stifled heat, which has been already so frequently mentioned. These last ages usually fall in with the beginning heats of summer, when sudden changes are to be expected in the state of the air and in the weather, which therefore should now be narrowly watched. If the air be damp, it is easily discovered; but that state which I have so often called a stifled heat, can only be perceived by your own feeling. In either of these cases, the unfriendly disposition of the air is easily corrected, and, in both cases, by the same means. A few dry faggots, or a wisp of straw, kindled into a blaze in every corner of the room will, in a few minutes, restore to your brood a dry and a freely circulating fresh air. And this is all that is necessary; for as to the actual degrees of heat, which are indicated by the thermometer, they may at all times and without danger be disregarded; except when the weather is too cool: in which case your must keep up a due warmth [Page 16] of the air in your nursery, by means of a steady fire. And, in general, it is adviseable to keep a constant fire in rainy wea­ther. But here it is necessary to remind the reader, that I take it for granted his nursery has every requisite mentioned above, in the sixth article of the fourth Section; particularly, a high cieling with a trap door, or some other equivalent opening overhead, to keep up a free circulation of air: with­out this precaution, a fire would do more harm than good.

6. IF it should happen, notwithstanding all your care, that your brood continues to languish in a state of relaxation, which tarnishes their colour, makes their skin unelastic, and destroys their appetite; there is one remedy left which has sometimes been found to do wonders. This remedy is the cold bath. Take your worms by handfuls and throw them into keelers or other vessels of cold water; let them lie a mi­nute or two, and then, after sweeping their tables clean, re­place them in their births as before.* This process is not at­tended with the danger which is always to be feared from a moist air. That creates a relaxation at the same time that it checks the perspiration; but the cold bath gives a new tone to the fibres, and then it will be easy, by means of a small brisk fire, to excite in your worms a fresh appetite, and thus restore them to life and vigour.

7. IF you have not a sufficient provision of food for the whole brood which you propose to raise, your labour will be thrown away. The necessary proportion should therefore be known before-hand. It has been already observed that, with good management, the worms that are bred from one ounce of eggs will yield one hundred weight of cocoons; and it is found, in general, that, to raise one pound of cocoons, it will re­quire twenty pounds of leaves. It is not easy to give any very exact rules for the estimating the quantity of leaves upon a tree as it stands; and yet this is the only way in which you can, before-hand, ascertain the question, whether or no you have, in prospect, a sufficient provision. The skill of making this estimate can only be acquired by habit and experience.

8. YOU must be careful, at all times, to gua [...] your brood against the ravages of rats and mice. Cats and traps will hardly be a sufficient security. A wisp of cotton or two, bound round every post a little below the under tier of tables, and paid over now and then with pitch and tar, may prove a bar­rier which those vermin will not be able to pass.

[Page 17]

SECTION VI.
Directions how to manage when the worms are ready for spinning.

1. THE voracity of the silk-worm, in the fifth age, continues three or four days; in which time the worm arrives at his utmost growth, being in length above three inches. His skin can be distended no farther, his ap­petite declines, he acquires, towards the head, a degree of transparency; he once more quits his food and the litter, and runs about with his head erect, seeking a proper place to be­gin his task of spinning.

2. As soon as you, discover this behaviour in any consider­able number, stop feeding, and prepare to furnish your brood with convenient lodgements for the work which they are about to undertake. Begin at one end of the lower tier of tables; clear away the litter, from side to side, as far as to the middle of the second board, first moving the worms, that were spread upon this space, either to the right or left, upon those that lie on the next adjoining space of the table. Then plant a little hedge-row of small bushes, from side to side across the table; fixing the foot of each bush upon the lower inter-tie, and the top against the under side of the next inter-tie above. These bushes, or branches, you must have in readiness before­hand. The foot should be stripped or pared smooth, to the height of four or five inches; and the main stalk should be left a little longer than the twigs that shoot out from it, in order that, in fixing the bush, the top may be a little bent, and so, pressing against the upper inter-tie, may stand firm and steady. When you have completed one row of these bushes quite across the table, bring back the worms, and place them along in a range on each side of your little hedge­row, in order that they may climb up and set to spinning. Then clear away another space; plant another hedge, &c. proceeding thus till you have gone over all the tables. All this must be done with as much dispatch as possible; for if your brood is not accommodated with a proper retreat, as soon as they are ready to go to work, the fibres of the skin, which is now extremely distended, lose their tone, the worms languish without spinning at all, or at least what they do spin is wasted here and there, and you lose your labour. In plant­ing these little hedge-rows, the bushes should be fixed as close together as they conveniently can be, that the worms may not lose their time in seeking where to climb; and on the up­per [Page 18] tables, the rows should not come quite to the edge on either side, but a space of a hand's breadth at least should be left, if the worms should any of them happen to fall from the branches, they would come from such a height down upon the floor as would kill them.*

3. IF your brood be numerous, you will now find the ad­vantage of having it divided into classes, which come to ma­turity one after another, at the distance of two or three days; because this will lessen the hurry and fatigue of making these necessary accommodations at the time when they are ready to go to work. But you cannot expect that even one class should be all ready at once; there will be a small part at least more tardy, and who therefore will want to be fed a little longer. It would be embarrassing to feed these among those that are better employed; and therefore, as soon as the ma­jority have begun to spin, it is better to move the lingerers apart, and feed them by themselves till they are disposed to labour, and then either to replace them on the tables already prepared, or, if their number is small, accommodate them with clean crisp shavings, strewed or suspended round them, into which they may creep and go to work.

4. IT is a very great advantage to let the spinners have a freely circulating air; and therefore, as soon as all the worms are mounted and have fairly begun their cocoons, draw out all the boards from every table, and leave the frame standing with all the intervals between the cross-pieces open, as so many passages for the air. This explains the use of the con­struction described above, in the third article of the fifth Sec­tion, and the reason why the upper tier is directed to be fur­nished with inter-ties like the rest, though that tier is not to be made use of as a table. The inter-ties there serve only now to keep the hedge rows of the next inferior table firm and steady. This frame of tables, when the boards are all re­moved and the cocoons [...]nished, will form a very pretty spec­tacle; it will be like so many rows of small trees, planted one on the top of another, and their little branches loaded with golden and silver fruit—A spectacle which nothing hinders us to exhibit, but the want of a sufficient number of mulberry­trees.

[Page 19]

SECTION VII.
Of the Cocoons to be set apart for seed.

1. BEFORE you begin to wind off the silk, it will be necessary to select a sufficient number of cocoons, which may furnish you with a provision of eggs for a future brood. With regard to the quantity to be set apart for this purpose, observe the following proportion; it is found by ex­perience that, one time with another, a pound of cocoons will yield one ounce of eggs. It has been recommended to choose out, for this use, the largest and finest of your stock.

2. As soon as the moth-flies begin to come out, you should have a clean table in readiness, on which you are to place and couple the flies. Let them continue coupled for about twelve hours, and then with care separate the male from the female, who will immediately begin to lay her eggs. If these should be laid upon the naked table, it would be impossible to get them off without breaking the shells; it is therefore recom­mended to cover the table with a piece of fine half-worn saga­thy, or some such thin kind of woollen stuff, from which the eggs are more easily separated than from paper or any other substance. But, as the table is chiefly destined to another purpose, it is also adviseable to suspend a strip of the same stuff upon a rod, all along one side, and so as to hang down nearly upon the edge of the table; and as fast as you perceive any moth beginning to lay her eggs, take her up gently and put her upon this strip of hanging stuff, where she will lay her eggs without disturbance, and they will not be soiled with any excrement.

3. THE cocoons, from which the moth-flies have come out, though they are not fit for winding, yet are not to be thrown away, they may be carded and spun into a very serviceable coarse kind of silk; they should therefore be kept as clean as may be—and it should be noted, that the moths do not pierce through the double balls of themselves, but would lay their eggs within, and die; such double balls as will not wind readily are, therefore, laid aside for seed; but as the flies or moths cannot get through of themselves, the cocoons should be cut at the blunt or thick end, to open a passage for them, and to prevent more waste of the silk than is needful.

[Page]

AN APPENDIX: CONTAINING

Some EXTRACTS from PULLIEN, on the Culture of Silk, &c. intended for a further Ex­planation of the foregoing Treatise, and to render the Management of Silk-worms more simple and easy.

SECTION I.
A brief View of the Silk-worm's Life.

THE silk-worm proceeds from an egg laid in summer; it is yellow when first laid, but in three or four days turns of a bluish ash-colour; its size is about that of a grain of mustard seed; it is preserved till the following spring, and is then hatched either by the natural warmth of the weather, or by artificial heat.

THE worm, that proceeds from this egg, is about one tenth of an inch long, as thick as a small pin, and of a black colour; three or four days warmth generally hatches it: this worm, from so small a size, in the space of six weeks, grows to be about three inches long, and an inch and half round, after which is desists from feeding, and begins to form its silk-ball.

IF begins the outside of its work first, and keeping within it, forms a hollow ball of silk round itself, which it generally fi­nishes in four or five days from the time of its beginning to spin.

IT lies inclosed in this ball a certain space of time, in hot climate fifteen days, in cold ones a month, and so proportion­ably; at the end of which it is transformed into a large moth, and works its way out by an hole, which it makes through the ball.

THE male and female moths then couple, and when they are separated, the female lays her eggs, to the number of three or four hundred; and, in a few days after, both male and female die.

THERE eggs are kept safe till the ensuing spring, at which season, they are again hatched into worms:—this is the general hatch of a silk-worm's life, when it is preserved to breed; but [Page 22] many millions of silk-balls, are wound off to manufacture before the moths spoil them, by boring their way out.

SECTION II.
Of hatching the Silk-worms eggs.

THE eggs will, as the weather grows warm, hatch of themselves; but in this way, there would be a great distance of time between those that hatched first, and those that hatched last, which is found to be very inconvenient; therefore it is necessary to make use of an artificial heat, in order that great numbers may be hatched at one time, and that the whole quantity may be hatched in two or three days.

THE degrees of heat which promotes the hatching of the egg, is that of the natural warmth of the human body, or any other heat equal to it; and, the method for hatching them by this heat, is as follows—

PUT your eggs into a cotton of silken bag, which should not contain above one ounce; this bag must be kept for two or three days in the bosom next the skin, by a person who doth not use violent exercise, until they suspect the eggs are near hatching. At night the bags are to be laid under the bolster, which should be made as warm as the skin.

WHEN they are ready to hatch, which will be about the end of the third day, each parcel of eggs, should be gently poured out of the bags into a clean shallow box, so as not to lay above one fourth of an inch thick, left the worms might be hindered from coming out. This box, containing the eggs, should be kept warm under the bed-cloaths, while they con­tinue warm after you have left your bed; after which, it must be placed between two pillows, heated moderately; for a small degree of heat, more than is necessary, would injure the worms when near hatching; and you must have other pillows ready warmed, as these cool, and so continue them all day be­tween pillows, and at night in your bed, till they begin to hatch.

MANY authors direct the eggs to be steeped in weak or thin wine, made as warm as the skin, for half a quarter of an hour, just before they are put to hatch, and then drying them in a moderate warmth, by gently rubbing them in a dry warm napkin—this makes them come out more equally; and those eggs which swim are separated and thrown away, being either of a weaker constitution or rotten—this will improve the breed of your worms.

[Page 23] N. B. IT has been thought by some persons, that if the eggs were steeped in wine, agreeable to these directions, and then set to hatch in the way which has been practised by such persons who have raised silk-worms in this Province, the worms would be hatched regularly enough, be more healthy, and better able to endure any sudden changes of the weather; but as many people may engage in this business, who have not had an op­portunity of being informed of that method, therefore it was thought adviseable to be inserted, and is as follows—About the middle of the month of April, steep your eggs in wine, as is directed above, and when they have been sufficiently steeped, they will be thoroughly and equally warmed, and be all dis­posed alike to a state of hatching, which the natural heat of the weather will afterwards sufficiently promote and conti­nue; but, to effect this, in the most equable way, it will be necessary, after having dried your eggs, to lay them thinly in shallow paper trays, and set them on a shelf in a chamber on which the sun doth not shine, out of the way of being injured by any of those things, which have been noticed heretofore; and let them be covered lightly to keep the dust from lodging on them.

BY keeping the windows of your room open, you may delay the hatching of your eggs sufficiently to guard against a scarcity of food; and also, inure your worms, while in embryo, to bear every change of our climate without injury—this would be to imitate nature; for the eggs, originally, must have been depo­sited by their parent moth on the branches or leaves of some trees, where they were exposed to the alternate change of night and day, shade and sun-shine, damp and dry, and all the inclemencies of their native climate: there, no doubt, they were healthy and did well; and was it not for the multi­tude of enemies which annoy them, when exposed on trees, we have reason to believe they might be reared in that way in this Province.

TOWARDS the latter end of April you should inspect your eggs daily, and so soon as you discover any of them to be hatched, remove your trays with the eggs into the warmest room you have, taking care to keep them out of the sun­shine, which would kill the worms, while very young, if ex­posed to it too long. In the future management of the worms, observe the directions did down in this book.

[Page 24]

SECTION III.
Of treating the Worms during the Time they are hatching.

WHEN the worms begin to hatch, you should have in readiness two pieces of paper, fitted to the inside of each hatching box, and pricked full of holes as big as a large pin would make; lay these two papers over one another in each box, and strew some mulberry leaves sliced, so as to cover the whole surface; the worms, as they hatch, will come through the holes of the paper and fix upon the leaves; and when you perceive them quite black with worms, take off the upper paper and gently slide the leaves with the worms which adhere to them, upon the place where you intend to keep them. In this manner you must continue to manage your worms till they are all hatched, being careful not to mix those together which are hatched at different times: where­fore you should have several papers or drawers to put them on, according to the time of their hatching. In two or three days, if you have managed right, your eggs will be all hatched.

SECTION IV.
Of the Stands or Shelves on which the Worms are to be kept.

FOR three weeks after the worms are hatched, they may be kept on sheets of brown paper, having their edges turned up a little, and placed on tables, or any more conve­nient place, where neither ants, mice, nor any other vermin will annoy them.

AFTER that period they occupy a greater space, and a stand formed agreeable to the following directions, will be very com­modious.

ERECT four upright poles, about two inches thick, and six or seven feet long, according to the height of your cieling, or the number of your worms; these uprights, by means, of cross bars one and a half inch thick, must be connected together, so as to form a square frame about four feet broad; something in the manner of the lower part of the frame of a rush bottom chair; in this frame, shelves or hurdles should be fixed one above another, on pins that are fastened into the upright poles, at the distance of fourteen or fifteen inches apart. If your number of worms should require, and your room admit of it, the frame may be made three or four times as long as it is [Page 25] broad, by adding a greater number of upright pieces, which are necessary both for strength and the convenience of having your shelves or hurdles small and light; for the length or these should only be sufficient to extend between the two nearest upright pieces, and if they were made exactly square it would be as convenient as any other form;—the breadth of your frame, or of your shelves, which is the same thing, should never be too great for you to reach conveniently half way over, that the worms which lay on the middle may be easily managed.

THE shelves or hurdle should be made of small reeds, willows and such like; these are preferable to boards, on ac­count of their cheapness, lightness, and dryness; these kind of hurdles are easily taken out of the frame, shaken and swept, yet this need not be done so frequently as when they are kept on boards; for the air will have admission through the vacan­cies of the reeds, &c. and will keep them sweeter, by drying the litter.

SEVERAL rows of these frames with hurdles may be placed in a room, leaving alleys between each row of them, wide enough for two persons to pass each other when they are at­tending the worms.

THOSE who have no great nurseries of worms, content themselves with nursing them on any kind of boards, shelves, tables, wicker hurdles, &c. fixed in whatever manner is most convenient; and the worms do well, provided rats and other vermin do not disturb them—but though this ordinary way may do, yet it will be best to keep them in the most conve­nient manner, as it will abridge and methodise the trouble of feeding and cleansing them.

SECTION V.
Of the Bedding for the Worms.

IF the vacancies between the reeds of your hurdle should be so large as to let the worms, or their litter and dung, drop through, you may put brown paper on the hurdles for the worms to lay on; but when the worms are grown so large that they will not fall through the hurdles, which will be when they are about three weeks old, the sheets of paper may be drawn from under them, leaving the litter of the leaves, which need not heretofore have been cleaned: if by this time your worms require to be spread on other hurdles, you may take up some of the litter, with the worms on it, and [Page 26] remove them to the other hurdles; and, if the litter does not af­ford sufficient bedding, a little dry hay may be added—If at any time you find this bedding moist, moldy, or offensive, your worms should all be removed, and furnished with a new bedding of light hay, so as to admit a draught of air, and to let the dung fall through it upon the hurdle; this will keep the worms sweeter and cleaner—but care should be taken to prevent the dung and litter from falling through the hurdle above, upon those worms which are on the hurdle beneath.

SECTION VI.
Of cleaning the Hurdles and Bedding.

TILL the worms have passed their third moult or sick­ness, the trouble of cleaning them is very small; for till they have passed the first moult, which is in six or eight days time from their being hatched, they need not be cleaned at all, but may lie upon the fibres of the leaf which they have fed on: these form a soft warm bed for them; and the dung which then comes from the worms, being fine, soon dries, and sinking among the fibres doth not incommode them: this is the case, provided a superfluity of food is not given to the worms; for if more leaves are given than they can well consume, the remaining litter would bury the little creatures.

IF you find the bedding any ways moist, after the first moulting, you may thin it as much as will needful, to let the remainder dry; after this it will hardly require any thing further to be done, until the second moulting is passed, unless it be to open the fibres of the bedding a little, now and then, with a hook.

YOU may readily take the worms off their old bedding, when it requires cleaning, by rolling a wisp of hay between your hands, till its fibres become entangled in one another; then spreading it out and flattening it, it will become a sort of net-work; lay this over your young worms, and strew fresh mul­berry leaves over the hay: the worms will come through the hay, and get upon the fresh leaves; and when they have all come through, you may, by means of a thin wooden or paste-board shovel or peel, remove the bed of fresh hay, with the leaves and worms all on it, upon a clean hurdle, leaving the old bed with all the litter behind, which may now easily be brushed off, and the hurdle cleaned—and, that you may lose as little time as possible, when you have spread the hay and leaves over one parcel of worms, you may proceed, and do the same to [Page 27] another; and so on to all the different parcels which you have: by which means the first parcel will be getting through the hay to their leaves, while you are managing the others.

BEFORE their third moulting, the litter they make is small, and mostly runs down among the withered fibres, therefore, till their third moulting it may suffice, as I have said, to clean away the litter and fibres once after each moulting, especially if the weather is moderately dry.

BUT the great business of cleaning is from their fourth and last moulting, to their time of spinning, which is about ten days; they will then require to be cleaned every two days, or oftener.

WHATEVER contrivance can now be found to lighten the toil of cleaning them, would be of great use; their bodies at this age are heavy, which presses upon and flattens the leaves, and after having lain thereon they seldom care to eat them; this occasions a waste of food and increase of litter; therefore, if any light dry materials, such as the withered fibres of rape or mustard, were spread on the hurdle, so as to form a con­texture very loose and open, about an inch or more in thick­ness, it will keep the leaves in such a situation as to be easily and wholly eaten: if you dress their hurdles in this manner, their litter will fall down through the bedding, and be received by the hurdle; which should be made so close as not to let it now pass through the vacancies.

THIS bedding may be much improved in convenience, by fixing it in a slight square frame, so that it may be all at once taken off the hurdle when you intend to clean it.—Thus, four reeds, about the thickness of your finger, being notched and tied together, so as to form a square frame about the size of the hurdle, and having some pieces of small cord wove across it, to divide the space into small squares of about four inches; it will make a sufficient support for the bedding, on which it must be laid; and when you want to clean your hurdle, you may list this frame with the bedding and worms on it all away at once, and then you may clean away the filth, and replace them.—Another method which appears useful is mentioned thus—to a thin light piece of lath, the length of your shelves or hurdles, fix several pieces of twine at equal distances, of about four inches apart, from end to end of the lath; this may be done by boring small holes through the lath, and drawing a piece of twine through each hole; these pieces of twine should each of them be knotted at the end, and be of sufficient length to extend across the hurdles; you must also have another lath of the same size as the former, and having nicks on one edge to correspond with the holes which [Page 28] the twine passes through in the other lath, the ends of each piece of twine being laid into its corresponding notch, the knots at their ends should prevent the twine from slipping through when the laths are extended apart.

This frame, if laid over the worms, and a suitable bedding laid upon it, with a fresh parcel of leaves thereon, the worms will crawl through the bedding and get upon the leaves; then they may be removed, the hurdle cleaned, and the worms, with their bedding, replaced upon it. The advantage of this last described frame is, that by slipping the end of each piece of twine out of the notch in the edge of the lath, you may gently draw the cords from under the bedding, so that this may serve to clean several shelves or hurdles, which the former would not.

SECTION VII.
Of the Choice of Cocoons for breeding.

IN three or four days, after they begin to spin, you may gather the silk-balls, and may know when the worms have done spinning by shaking the ball; if they are done, the chry­salis or worms will be loose and rattle in it. Those which began to spin the earl est, should be reserved for breed; and let them be the largest, firmest, and deepest coloured balls.* In choosing these balls you must, as well as you can judge, take an equal number of males and females; those which contain the males are generally more taper and sharp at the ends, than those which hold the females, which are more blunt and round at the ends, and somewhat more swelled in the middle.—You might mistake those which are spun double for females; but besides that these are of an extraordinary size, you may distinguish them by their clumsey shape, which is rather round than oval.

Two hundred males, and as many females, will produce about one ounce of eggs; and one ounce of eggs are in number from forty-five to fifty thousand; from which computation you may determine what number of balls you will want to re­serve for your breed.—The balls which you choose for breed being fixed upon, take a pretty strong thread, and with a needle pass it through the outer silk of all the male balls on one side; and then with another thread, in like manner, string all the female balls; taking care not to hurt the animal which [Page 29] is inclosed; and having strung all your balls, tie the two ends of your thread together, and hang them up in the shade, out of the reach of rats and mice, which otherwise would infal­libly destroy them. The rest of your silk-balls should either be reeled of before the moths within pierce them through, to make their escape out, or else the moth should be killed within the ball, as will be directed hereafter.

SECTION VIII.
The Management of those Silk-pods which are chosen for Seed—the coming out of the Moths—the Method of coupling them, &c.

THERE is nothing of greater importance in the ma­nagement of silk-worms, than that of obtaining a strong healthy breed; every; method therefore which improves it, ought carefully to be attended to; for when you have once got a good kind, you can easily keep it up; but if you let your worms degenerate, and breed promiscuously, the weak with the strong, in a short time you will have none fit to raise a good breed from.

I HAVE already given directions how to make choice of the most proper silk-balls to breed from—The next thing you may expect to see is—the coming forth of the moth, which will be in about eighteen or twenty days, from the time of the worm's beginning to spin.*

THE moths generally come out in the morning, and cling with their feet to the outside of the balls; some odd ones may chance to fall, which may expose them to the rats, mice, cats, &c. to prevent which, something should be placed un­der each string of balls, to receive such moths.

WHEN you choose your balls for breed, you have been directed to put the males and females on separate threads, be­cause, if they were on the same, they would begin to couple as soon as they came out. Now they are come out, you may easily distinguish the male and female apart—the former, by his being much brisker, always fluttering about, and has black or dark coloured horns or feelers; the latter, by her having a large round belly: but if you, by mistake, have mixed them together on the same threads, you may now separate them.

[Page 30] BY the time the moth begins to come out, you should have nailed, against one side of your room, a piece of smooth woollen stuff, no matter how old or ordinary, of a sufficient size for the number of your moths; then, by means of two or more short threads fastened to its lower edge, you may turn it up about three or four inches; and fastening the other end of the threads a little higher into the stuff, fix two short sticks, sharpened at the end, to make the lower edge of the stuff stand out from the wall, like a kind of a shelf about three or four inches broad; which will prevent any of the moths, when coupling on the stuff, from falling to the ground. After this, take the moths gently from off the silk-balls, and place them by pairs, a male and famale together, on the above-mentioned piece of stuff, to which they will cling; and, having purged themselves of a reddish liquor, they will then couple.

YOU should have another piece of stuff, of the same kind, and fixed in the same manner with that already described, to which you should remove those moths that are coupled; by which means you will be able to distinguish those that have not coupled, and those which have.

WHEN they have been coupled about eight or nine hours, they should be separated, and the male ones thrown away. Having already prepared a quantity of the leaves of the wal­nut-tree, spread them on the bottom of a large drawer; and then take those female moths which are separated from the male, and place them on these leaves, within the drawer, where they will lay their eggs, and soon afterwards die.

[Page 31]

SECTION IX.
Of preserving the Eggs.

WHEN the moths have done laying, and the eggs at­tained their tarnished bluish ash colour, you must scrape them off the leaves into little pine or cedar boxes, such as wafer or pill boxes; which should be placed, during the heat of summer, in the coolest apartment in your house, pro­vided it be not damp, and also out of the reach of rats and mice, which are enemies to the silk-worm in every state.—When the weather grows cool, the box with the eggs may be placed amongst your clothes in your chest of drawers, and be kept until the ensuing spring.

SECTION X.
Of killing the Worm or Grub, in the Cocoon or Silk-ball.

IF you have a great many balls, it cannot be expected that you should be able to wind the whol [...] off before the time that the moth will pierce them; therefore you should be care­ful to prevent this irreparable loss—T [...] worms should be killed in the silk-ball soon after it has done spinning.—There are three different methods in practice; but the most simple and easy is—by the heat of the sun, which will do very well in these colonies if the weather should be favourable.—You should expose your silk-balls to the strongest heat of the sun on pewter dishes, or on boards covered with dark coloured cloths, (taking care at the same time not to lay them too thick) for two or three days, which generally kills all the worms.

THE second method is—by putting them into an oven in baskets, after the bread is drawn, leaving them in about one quarter of an hour; but this method is dangerous; for too great an heat would injure your balls, and too small a degree would not effectually kill the worms; however, to an expe­rienced hand, this method might be both the most convenient and expeditious; and is the way made use of in Georgia.

THE third method is—by the steam of boiling water, and is said to be preferable to either of the other methods, as it does not injure the silk, and may be done with certainty.

TAKE a large wooden tub, fill it nearly with boiling water; upon the top which put a wicker basket, on that lay some loose kind of woollen cloth, which will let the steam pass through; on this cloth lay your silk-balls about four or five [Page 32] inches thick, then cover them close with a blanket; and when they have been there long enough for the steam to get through, you may know whether the heat is sufficient to kill them; for if the heat is uneasy to the hand, an hour or two conti­nuance, in such heat, will kill the worms; but if the water cools so as not to be uneasy, it must be changed for fresh boiling water; therefore you should have a kettle of water constantly on the fire for the purpose.—When they are suffi­ciently steamed, they should be dried in the sun.

HAVING thus secured your silk-balls, ready to be wound off at your leisure, you will not be hurried in that business; for the balls might now be kept for some weeks; they will, how­ever, wind the easier by not being kept too long, which is apt to harden the gum, and bind the threads together.

N. B. Those persons who shall raise any silk-worms, are requested to communicate such observations, on the manage­ment of the worm, as may occur, if better adapted to this climate and country than what are delivered in this Treatise, to any of the Managers of the institution for promoting the culture of silk, or heir Treasurer; which will be thankfully received, and published for the benefit of the inhabitants of these Colonies.

THE END

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