Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/690

672 produced general well-being, without the growth of offensive differences. I cannot say how it is now, but in my childhood there were no paupers in our commune, except two infirm people who were supported in their misfortunes by voluntary aid.



These striking results could not fail to affect the neighboring country. This example of the culture of the mulberry was imitated throughout the south of France, and adopted more or less in other departments. You can judge of the progress made in this culture by the following figures, giving the quantity of cocoons produced annually:

These 56,000,000 lbs. of cocoons sold at from 2⅓ to 2½ francs per lb., representing a value of about 130,000,000 francs. Now, these millions all went to agriculture, to the first producer; and so they added to the national wealth at its most vital source. If this progress had continued, in a few years we should have been able to supply our own manufactures, and relieve ourselves of the tribute of 60 or 65,000,000 francs that we pay to foreign countries. But, unhappily, at the moment when this culture was most prosperous, when mulberry-plantations were springing up on all sides, fed by the nurseries which were each day more numerous, all this prosperity disappeared before the terrible scourge to which I alluded in the beginning of my discourse.

Like all our domestic animals, the silk-worm is subject to various maladies. One, called the muscardine, that for a long time was the terror of breeders, is caused by a species of mould or microscopic mushroom. This mushroom invades the interior of the body of the insect. After affecting all the tissues, this vegetal parasite sometimes