Excerpt from Summary of the Principal Chinese Treatises: Upon the Culture of the Mulberry and the Rearing of Silk Worms It has been ascertained, by laying before silk worms at the same time various kinds of mulberry leaves, they will eat first the white, next the red, and lastly the black, in the order of the tenderness of the leaves. The tartarian holds a high place in their esteem. The red mulberry, morns rubra, the second in the order of preference, is indigenous to the Middle and Southern States, and is remarked by botanists, as growing from Virginia to Louisiana. Abundant experiments have demonstrated that the white mulberry may be successfully Cultivated still farther North in the United States. The Chinese assert i' that their mulberries grow in all soils, and with every aspect which, from the extreme industry and sedulous care of that people, is not to be doubted. Early efforts were made to naturalize the silk worms in the American Colonies by the British. Crown and chartered companies, in Virginia in 1662, and in Georgia and south-carolina in 1732. They failed, after some partial success. The failure has been ascribed to various causes, such as the more profitable culture of cotton and tobacco, the sparseness of population, the distant market; but in no instance that we have seen, has it been charged to climate, ill success of the mulberry, or atmospherical influences, which oppose so fatally the extension of the culture in Western Europe. From a careful review of those early experiments, we are satisfied that the mea gerness of the population, and the distant market for their raw material, were the effective checks to the prosecution of the silk culture in Virginia, so'uth-carolina, and Georgia. The aspect of things is materially chang ed within the last century; the wilderness is now a populous country the fifteen or twenty thousand inhabitants are many millions - the raw, thrown, or manufactured silk would now find a ready purchaser or con sumer without crossing the Atlantic - and speedy remuneration be the con sequence to the grower. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.