IN NEW ZEALAND.

11

D.—No. 3,

yields filoselle or floss silk, " only more glossy," which is manufactured in France under the name of galette or fantaisie, and of which there is an immense consumption. Mixing it with thread and wool, it is largely employed in manufacturing fancy stuffs. This is manufactured in great quantities at Boubaix, Nismes, and Lyons, and such an immense quantity of this substance is consumed in France that every year 1,200,000 kilogrammes are imported from abroad. The qualities of this new textile fabric have been studied and appreciated by people wrell calculated to know its worth. Among others, by Messrs. Henry Schlumberger and Charles de Jongh, great manufacturers, A. Guebuiller, and Dr. Sacc, the eminent Professor of Chemistry at Wesserling. As there have not yet been enough ailanthus cocoons to permit an industrial trial, these gentlemen tried their machines with the cocoons of the castor-oil worm ; but they admit that, if there is any difference between the two, it is all in favour of the ailanthus silk, because they have ascertained it will bleach well. Thus Dr. Sacc, inspeaking of tho castor-oil silk says : —" One fact which diminishes the value of this silk is its brownish colour, which prevents its being used for clear colours. Tho fact disappears completely with the silk of the ailanthus worm, with which I will engage myself to produce white silk. That clever chemist and weaver, Monsieur de Jongh, finds that the gloss of the ailanthus silk far surpasses any of the other known kinds of bourre de soie." Monsieur Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire, President of the Imperial Society of Acclimatization, when lecturing at the Academy of Sciences in 1857, said —" Here is the report from the weavers at Alsace, who have made use of Monsieur Schlumbcrger's experiments on the ailanthus silk. Monsieur H. Schlumberger has found the cocoons very easy to card and spin. The thread obtained is less brilliant, strong, and rough ; it left no residue, not more than in combing the thread. It is a most excellent stuff for use in all manufactures where bourre is required. The cocoons are easily cleaned, and they will take a good dye. This culture made on a great scale will furnish in abundance a stronger and finer floss than the mulberry silkworm." The strength of this silk is immense, and to this is attributable the great durability of the Indian foulards, which are composed exclusively of this silk. In speaking of this silk, Father Incarville said —" Tho silk produced by the ailanthus lasts double the time of tho mulberry worm, and does not spot so easily, and washes like linen." These remarks will be enough to prove the immense utility of this cultivation in France and England. MANAGEMENT OF THE AILANTHUS SILKWORM. The ailanthus silkworm may have in the South and in Algeria three generations ; but with us in England it is better to be content with tw To. Unlike the mulberry silkworm, the eggs do not keep during the winter, but some of the cocoons remain with their live chrysalis inactive during the dull months, ready to become butterflies in the spring. The moths ought to appear between the sth and 10th of Juno at latest, and as about from forty to forty-five days must elapse between the laying of the eggs, their becoming moths, and the formation of the cocoons, the first gathering ought to be from the 25th to the 30th July. The cocoons will remain inactive about twenty-six days, at the temperature of 70° to 80° Fahrenheit, not becoming moths till 26th August at latest. The eggs will be laid immediately, and these worms will have finished their cocoons at latest by 30th September or sth October. The cocoons ought to be kept during tho winter strung up like beads in a place where the temperature ranges from 60° to 70° Fahrenheit. The moths will begin to appear about the sth or 10th June. Every evening the moths must be placed on a tray with a cloth over it, and air must be admitted. The females will lay against tho sides of these trays, and the eggs must be detached either by a wooden knife or by the nail, and put either in a room heated 70° or 80° Fahrenheit, or else in sunshine, where they will hatch. About ten or twelve days after their having been laid you had better put ailanthus leaves on the eggs, when the young worms will immediately climb on them and commence feeding. These leaves ought then to be placed in a bottle of water, the ends well stuffed into the bottles, as the young worms might descend the stems and then into the neck of the bottle, where they would get drowned immediately. If unforeseen circumstances —bad weather for instance —prevented you putting the young worms on the trees in the open air, you must place fresh bunches in bottles close to faded leaves, w rhen the worms will go on to them. To save the few that may possibly fall clown, you would do well to place a few leaves where the bottles stand, upon which the worms will creep immediately. You must guard against giving these worms old leaves gathered from a large tree, because they could not be so easily devoured by them, and they would kill a great many. This inconvenience would not arise where the plantations are made expressly for the worms, because the frequent cutting of the trees makes them put forth new shoots and tender leaves. In placing the young worms on the ailanthus trees, they must be strewed as it were on the plants. You must bring them on the old leaves in large baskets lined with paper, and you must fix these leaves on the trees. They might be fixed with pins, or tied on till the worms have hold of the new leaves. Experience can alone teach the number of worms required on each tree. When once the worms are securely fixed on the leaves, there is no further trouble, except to see that ants and wasps do not carry them off. The best manner of doing this would be to destroy the wasps in the spring-time, before the nests are made. When the worms have come to their fourth change, they begin to spin their cocoons on the leaves of the ailanthus (or even on any other ones in the vicinity), and the cocoons may be gathered eight or ten days after the beginning of the spinning. About a month after the cocoons are finished the moths will appear. They will lay as in the springtime, and soon after the eggs wall be hatched. The same process must be gone through as I have described, if you are able to hatch the eggs about the 30th August. This second cultivation would end the first days of October —that is, if it were a tolerable season. The best manner of preserving the reproductive cocoons during the winter has not been fully ascertained ;