Transcription

[Page 432]
2
Silk Culture


  Hence it may be useful to mention:-
      That the "unit" by which silkworm rearing is reckoned means one ounce of 437 1/2 grains, avoirdupois the "heavy pound" of 7,000 grains = 16 ounces.
  An "ounce of eggs" (known technically as "graine" or "seed") means from about 38,000 (perhaps fewer) or 40,000 being usually regarded as one ounce.
  Two ounces of eggs, say about 80,000, is by all experience fully enough for any one rearing, in any one place, at one time, and such a rearing should only be attempted by a competent rearer, where there is abundance of leaf ready grown and close at hand, to be gathered as needed.
   Crowing or having excessive numbers near together occasions more or less weakness and sickness, and is a sure cause of losses in several ways, and often of disease. In any management worthy the name each and every worm must have its abundant supply of fresh air, both for its own comfort and its own health, as well as of the whole rearing, by the removal and dissipation of the vapours continually thrown off.
   Whatever the number of worms, all of one rearing should each and every one be of exactly the same age, hatched out on one (the same) day, go through all their stages contemporaneously, each one neither sooner nor later than its fellows, and become cocoons, moths, and eggs again - in each and every stage the same days.
   To effect this demands good management, skill and care, which can only be learned by practical experience.
   The more or less perfect, intelligent, and masterful, the experience truly acquired, so will be the economy and profit of the rearing.  The more it comes short of good management, skill, and care, which can only be learned by practical experience.
   The more or less perfect, intelligent, and masterful, the experience truly acquired, so will be the economy and profit of the rearing.  The more it comes short of good management the greater the confusion and waste, labour, trouble, and expense, with proportionate less results in silk and in money.
   A plantation should be from 5 upwards to about 20 acres or more, and all of one kind of mulberry, ninety trees would be enough on one acre of first-quality, deep, rich land well drained and favoured with a good regular rainfall, and 120 to 150 trees on fairly-good land.
   The value yearly of mulberry leaf is hard to state with any degree of accuracy.  The quality, from obviously varying, considerations, must vary greatly, and quantity likewise.  It may be sufficient to say that the quantity of leaf from an acre well grown is very considerable, if sold at 10d. or 1s. per cwt.  it is reckoned to yield about £3 or £4 to £7 or £8 more or less, as may be, per acre, that is, if sold by the grower of the leaf and paid for by the raiser of cocoons.
   The results of cocoons. - From actual local experience the produce of an acre of mulberry properly cultivated and planted, properly pruned and tended, should yield, with fair management, £15 to £25 per acre yearly, after a sufficient growth of trees.
   It might be mentioned in a casual way that owners of land, with sons and daughters especially, could with very slight outlay provide for each one severally by making plantations , even while they, the girls and boys, are growing up and the plantations at the same time also growing, and thus draw profit from their land additional to what it yields now - if indeed it yields anything at present.  It should be noted that returns from silk growing are less subject to fluctuation in demand, and less liable to disappointment from climatic causes than fruit or any agricultural produce now raised in the Colony, not even excepting tobacco or grapes.  Men and women could thus benefit themselves, greatly improve their properties, obtain a new 
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