Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 1.djvu/393

 aroused the interest of many English merchants and travellers of reputation in the advancement of silk husbandry in Virginia, seems to have been issued merely to set forth the great advantages that would flow to the planters should they follow Miss Ferrer&#8217;s example in allowing their silk-worms to feed on mulberry leaves in the open air. Not only would these insects in this situation enrich the colonists without making an outlay of labor on their part necessary, or interfering with the cultivation of their present commodities, but it would even divert the Indians from their rude occupations, as they would find that they could obtain from the settlers the coats, bells, beads, and hatchets which they desired, by exchanging for these articles the silk bottoms which they had gathered from their mulberry trees or in the forest. If the native silk-worm had been equal to the description given of it in this pamphlet, it would not, if it had been cultivated, have fallen short of the glowing expectations of Miss Ferrer, its anticipated influence in civilizing the Indians alone excepted. Its outer bottom was ten inches in circumference and six inches in length. Enclosed within this was a second bottom, in which the worm was wrapped, the whole being embedded in the silk filling the outer bottom, the second bottom concealing the worm being also full of the same material. The Virginian worm in seeking its food did not confine itself to the mulberry, as the silkworm of all other countries did, but fed with equal avidity upon the leaves of the crab, plum, poplar, oak, apple, cherry, and hickory. Miss Ferrer had received, from friends in Virginia, specimens of worms taken from each of these trees, and they were as large as if they had been nourished by the mulberry. While a thousand English bottoms produced only one pound of silk, from the same