Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/336

322 five dollars to pay us for the time. spent in taking care of the worms during six weeks of intensely hot weather. Our expenses, not counting the cost of the fuel burned, amounted to over one dollar and fifty cents.

That others have had somewhat similar experiences is shown by the following extracts from recent newspapers. From Springfield, Massachusetts, a lady writes that, although she had but about eight hundred silk-worms, they kept her very busy during the last molt picking leaves, and she should not advise any one to engage in the business unless one is willing to work, for it is not an employment for lazy people. In return for her cocoons, which she sent to the New York Silk Exchange, she received a silk handkerchief and some embroidery floss made from her own cocoons, valued at about one dollar and twenty-five cents, which she thought "poor pay for six weeks' work." Her expenses, not counting time and labor, amounted to one dollar and sixty-three cents.

A widow in Ohio thought that the culture of silk might prove a pleasant and profitable way of supporting herself and two children; but after some expense and "six weeks of hard work, Sundays and all, found that she had not made a dollar by the operation."

From the "Massachusetts Plowman" the following extract is quoted: "Silk-culture requires a very close, unremitting attention on the part of those engaged in it, and if the work is not laborious it is so constant as to prevent the following of any other occupation at the same time. Those who desire to engage in sericulture will do well to consider thoroughly the matter."

One thing I can say in regard to the experiment, it is interesting work, though, whether it would be so to a person not interested at the outset in such matters I can not say; and, besides, it keeps one so busy that the interesting points are often overlooked. Yet I am sure that numerous friends who saw the worms in their different stages thoroughly enjoyed them, and it was of some account certainly to have interested so many people in a subject of so much importance. How many children, and I may say older people as well, never knew before that a moth came from a caterpillar, or that a worm formed the cocoon from which all our silk is made!



ANY old theories of education are being mercilessly discussed. Many new theories claim the places of the old. The classical scholar still claims for the ancient languages the greatest educational power. The advocate of modern languages says life is too short to 