have seen much surprise expressed in letters transmitted to the society upon this subject, that upon taking up roots of seven or more years old the greatest quantity should be good for nothing; and as the cause has never been reflected on, the only remedy the authors have ventured to recommend, is a more early removal, not being aware that this measure is at once destructive of all the beneficial consequences of age. "Lastly. Notwithstanding our utmost care, it must not be expect ed that success will attend us in every instance; for this reason, every spring and autumn the plants should undergo a general examination. The young ones will presently discover their real situation, for either their leaves will wither as fast as they are produced, or their growth will become stunted: but with regard to the older ones, or those that have blown, as in most cases there will be found enough sound root to produce a very luxuriant foliage, their state can only be discovered by pressing a finger into the centre of the crown; the least unsoundness will soon be perceptible by this means.

"In both these cases I recommend the removal of the plants, and the vacancies occupied with others; for in the former much time will be saved, and the bad situation of the latter, by remaining, will only be aggravated, while it furnishes the cultivator with an opportunity of examining into the occasion of the several defects, and may lead to future prevention.

"Thus, Sir, I have said for the present, in a general way, every thing very material that the subject suggests should any one be desirous of more particular information, I beg leave to refer him to the

volumes of the Society's Trans actions. A system of culture is recommended in that of last year, I hope not the less effective for being simple; and although its description may be thought rather prolix by the general reader, yet perhaps not unnecessarily so by the inqui sitive.

"It therefore only remains for me to add a few words respecting my own plantation. The accompanying certificate, which I trust is perfectly regular, will inform the society, that in the year 1797 I have added 3040 to my former number, making an aggregate of nearly 5000 plants. The method I pursued was exactly that already referred to; and after this second and more extensive trial I confess myself unable to propose a better.

"With this you will likewise receive a small quantity of cured rhubarb, being a part of the produce of my plantation, commenced under the auspices of the society in the year 1792; and I believe, considering its age, it equals any they may hitherto have seen. Myonly motive for this, is a desire to offer some kind of proof in support of my pretensions to perseverance. I hope I may be permitted to send for it again, as it is all I have left, without a possibility of obtaining more till the next season.

"In conclusion, Sir, I can only repeat my former sentiments, that the approbation of a society, whose every object is for this public advantage must reflect credit upon every individual who is fortunate enough to be so distinguished. I have been so happy; and I take the opportunity to say, that this circumstance I shall consider, to the latest period of my life, as honourable in the greatest degree; at

the

"SIR,

"THE

HE principle that induced me to trouble you with this letter, will, I hope, serve for an a. pology, and gain your indulgence.

"Not till late in this autumn the thirteen volumes of the Transactions of the Society for the Eucouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, came to my hands. I perused them with so much the more pleasure, as I remember, while in England, in my younger years, the first existence and sudden rise of this useful society, by the public spirit of Mr Shipley, whose name was ever since respectable to me,

"I dare not intrude on your time, so usefully employed for the public good of your country, to expatiate on the many articles I most admired, but especially the encouragement of plantations, by which the society will be the benefactor of ages to come; yet one article struck me, for its not answering the expectations and repeated laudable exertions of the society; I mean, the cultivation of silk and the mulberry-tree, an object so worthy the society's attention,

"I will venture to justify the trouble I am going to give you, sir, by this long letter, in saying something which may a pear of some use on that score. You will simile to hear a man living under the 58th degree of latitude, and so much to the east as beyond the Baltic, speak of the cultivation of the mulberry-tree and rearing of silkworms; yet I hope to win your indulgence, perhaps your candid approbation of some of my thoughts. Many thousands of English nobility and gentry travelled, rambled, even lived in Italy and the South of France; numbers of them I have seen and known there; but none cared to inquire about the silkworm, and its prodigious work: amusements chiefly took up their time; of a few, antiquities, statues, paintings, of which, be it said to their honour, no nation has made so rich a harvest on the hungry Italians, preying on the wealth of the English travellers.

"But to come to the silkworms, While I served, in the year 1758, in the Russian army, in Pomerania, L3 parti

particularly near the coast of the Baltic, I had the good luck, being quarter-master general of a division, to share a considerable corn-field of a gentleman; this produced an acquaintance with the owner having seen there many plantations of mulberry-trees, of both sorts, be told me their use, and shewed me their produce. I requested some seeds of both, and the model of a spinning-wheel.

"Some of the seeds were sown at a villa near St. Petersburgh, belonging to an uncle of mine; they always froze to the earth; yet in the following years would rise as high as three or four feet, in several branches, and give, with a few larger trees in the green-house, food for three thousand silkworms, which gave near a pound of silk. But this essay had no followers, and is now no more.

"Another part of the Pomerapian seed was sown next spring at my then living father's estate, where I now live, in Livonia, a bout eighty-five English miles north of Riga. The frosts took always half of the year's growth. They were planted in a couple of borders, and kept under the sheers, then much in use, as formerly in England. No use was made of the leaves. When I retired from public life, I found no more than forty-five trees, or rather bushes, standing in one row, two feet asunder; I transplanted every second or third tree, by which I lost three trees I made sucklings, and have more than a hundred low standard trees by them; cuttings I never attempted, misled by a German author, who assured me they would not take.

"I wrote for some seeds-from Berlin, of the white mulberry, of which I had many thousand plants;

being no botanist, I am not sure they are of the white though they have leaves much more smooth and tender than my old trees.

"The seedlings rose a foot in the first year, but froze to the ground; the next they rose to two feet, of which more than a foot was lost by the next winter; so they did the third year: then I transplanted them, partly in rows in beds, one foot asunder, others in sundry places of light middling land. I gave many hundreds to several ladies, who hearing of my silkworms, were curious to have the plants. A lady near the town of Dorpat, near a hundred miles to the northeast, rears already a couple of thousand silkworms," and has a shawl embroidered with her own silk of natural colours. Those planted in rows and beds were, after two years, planted for good, in different places, even in the field; of these, having no shelter, some have suffered more than those which were protected by buildings or other trees.

"I made no use of my mulberry-leaves till five years ago. Travelling in White Russia, or to be more explicit, in the Government of Polotzk, on the borders of the river Duna, about one hundred and fifty miles to the east of Riga, consequently somewhat colder, I found some ladies rufiling cocoons, having, as they said, no spinningwheel; the cocoons were spun there the same summer. The mother of these ladies being from the southern borders of former Poland, had brought young mulberry-trees from thence, which I saw thrive very well, being standard trees of about fifteen feet high, and, near the ground, of about three inches thick.

"They gave me a sheet of pa

per

per with some eggs: the next year I had near three thousand worms spiuning. A German pamphlet from Berlin served me for instruction, and to make a spinning wheel, for my Pomeranian model was lost. I had such a great call for cocoons, that, instead of near a pound, which I might probably have had, I got but ten ounces of silk, taking eight or nine cocoons to a thread. I sent some of the silk to her Imperial Majesty, of glorious memory, she being a great promoter of all sorts of industry. I received a most gracious letter of thanks from her hand: I sent likewise some silk to the Society of Economy at Petersburg, whose president, count Anhalt, wrote to me a letter of thanks and approbation. For myself, I got a pair of knitted white silk stockings, having no loom for weaving in this neighbourhood.

"The two following years about the same number were reared, though more might have been so. The sucklings of my old trees transplanted beginning to give a pretty deal of leaves, this year I expected to have had eight thousand; but being obliged to make a journey in the beginning of May to the southern parts of Russia, beyond Kiovia, which journey took up the whole summer, the young lady I entrusted with rearing my silkworms, full of eagerness to the purpose, exposed the sheets with the eggs to the sun too soon: when the leaves had scarce begun to break, overjoyed at the prodigious number that crept out, she forgot my prescription, counted more than sixteen thousand at the third skinning; but the trees were then almost bare of leaves; she could not resolve to throw one half away to save the other; so most of the poor animalcula died,

and scarce two thousand remained, which gave much smaller cocoons than in the former years. I am even in danger of losing my old trees, for they seem weakened by being stripped too much. Most of my old trees, which are rather bushes of about six, seven, or eight feet, branching from the ground, are of the black sort, bearing very small fruit, much smaller than in England: but those I take to be white ones do not bear any. I still take them to be such, because they suffer somewhat more by the frosts, and the little creatures eat their leaves more eagerly than from the others.

"No insects I ever remarked on either: the Reverend Mr. Swayne's remarking some earwigs, is a phanomenon I never heard of in Italy, nor this summer at Kiovia, nor found it in any book.

"From these premises, sir, methinks we may venture to draw the following outlines of what might be proper to come nearer to the useful and extensive aim of the society."

"I. That the white mulberrytree is the only one that will produce silk.

The quotation, page 191, in your tenth volume, of Mr. Hanway's Travels, a man of known veracity, I can assure to be true, by what I have heard of a gentleman who lived many years at Astrachan, and had connexions with the Armenians, who are the principal traders with Persia and Persian silk, an article increasing yearly, for the use of the manufac tures at Moscow. The Persian silkworms, as those in Italy and the south of France, feed most certainly on the white mulberry leaves alone. This is confirmed by the ingenious and indefatigable Mr. Arthur Young, in his Travels in the South of France and Lombardy, as L 4

quoted

quoted by Mr. Swayne, which I have read in his works; and Mr. Bertezen affirms the same; while what he gives as his own opinion is evidently fallacious, if not set forward on purpose to mislead. No doubt the worms will live on the black, but will not thrive, nor give any other but indifferent silk. 1. therefore think, that for a complete establishment and producing silk, this being the laudable aim of the society, the white mulberry alone should be raised, using the black, existing of old in England for its fruit, only as a necessitous nourishment, degrading the quality and value of the silk. As a further proof I must add, that the Organzine silk, the best Europe produces, owes its excellence to the particular kind of white mulberry-trees, of which the branches are grafted on those raised from seed. I remember to have heard, and even read somewhere, that they get, by way of smuggling, the branches to France, to graft the trees in Provence, Dauphiné, and Languedoc premiums will bring

them as certainly to England,

"II. That the white mulberrytree will thrive most certainly in England and Wales, and even in Scotland as far as Edinburgh, as a middling standard-tree. The black and the white will do, though this less flourishingly, as far as the most nor hern coasts of Scotland, perhaps not as a standard-tree, but certainly as a large bushy shrub, as my old trees are here. My trees, from sucklings and seeds, are train ed as small standard-trees, the stem or trunk only four or three feet. To judge by the latitude, the white mulberry will thrive in Ireland as well as in Eugland; but the seeds should not be taken from France nor Italy, nor any warmer clime. I would propose to get them by Stet.

ten from Pomerania, and from Berlin; nav, I have been assured some may be had from Koningsberg in Prussia: care must be taken to distinguish the two sorts. The white one may be got too from Dresden and Leipzig: the seed of the black in England will do for the northern parts of England; but for Scotland I should rather obtain them from Pomerania and Prussia.

“ III. That the seeds should be sown in plain but light gardenland. rather somewhat sandy, with out any dung whatever. The Rev. Mr. Swayne, in your tenth volume, guesses right when he attributes the loss of his plants to the dung.

"IV. That I doubt the mode of cuttings to multiply the mulberrytree. I will make, next spring, a trial in land, and in a green-house without heat; yet I think it a mistake: but from seeds, the aim be ing universal, it seems more eligi ble, especially if taken from a northern clime, as proposed above.

"V. That, to all those that will undertake to raise silkworms, an excessive cleanliness should be recommended: no draught of air, no smoke, qualm, damp vapour. or exhalation whatever, should come pear them; no sickly person approach them.

“VI. That no sun-shine, but only a temperate or broken light, should come upon them; the heat of the room should be between twelve and fitteen of Réaumur : airing more than once, especially in the morning, is necessary. The room should have shutters, to secure them from the effect of thunder aud lightning; consequently the bringing them into the air, as proposed by the Rev. Mr. Swayne, I dare not adopt; besides, the carrying the apparatus into the gar den, and back into the house, is an

unne