Excerpt from The Mulberry Silk-Worm: Being a Manual of Instructions in Silk-Culture

The growing interest shown in the culture of Silk, in the United States, is attested by the demands upon this Department for copies of this man ual, which has hitherto been published as Special Report No. 11. Origi nally prepared as a brief manual, based on my own experience of the industry in America, the present demands of Silk-growers, or rather of those desirous of becoming such, call for some further details, and in elaborating the work it has been thought best to include it among the bulletins of the Division. I have also divided the matter into chapters, and those on the implements which are necessary to, or facilitate, the work; those on diseases, reproduction, reeling, and the physical prop erties of raw silk embrace essentially new material, parts of Chapters V and VI being from my current annual report not yet distributed.

In Chapter VIII, in speaking of machinery I have omitted the de tailed descriptions of special machines given in former editions and ex plained rather the mechanical principles that should be involved in all. A description of the Serrell Reel would have been very appropriate, but the inventor has been promised by the Commissioner that such should not be made public until all patents are secured. I Shall hope to elab orate this chapter in some future edition.

It must not be forgotten that the original manual was never intended as an extended treatise on silk-raising or reeling, but was prepared to give, in a Simple and most condensed way, information to those inter osted, and in a form applicable to the United States. It is gratifying to know that a number of other pamphlets on the Silk-worm have Of late years been published, and that this manual has been quite freely used in their preparation. In one instance, in fact, an almost verbatim copy has been published and sold privately. I have found little or no occasion to alter opinions expressed in the manual, but in the present edition have revised the estimates of profits given in the Introduction to the original edition, leavmg out those on egg production, because of the changed conditions since 1870, which have rendered such work, as a profitable business, obsolete in this country, and the production of sound and reliable eggs much more difficult and expensive.

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