Cluny, in his "American Traveller," printed in London, 1769, says, "The climate of Georgia has been found to agree in every respect with the silk worm." Experience, however, proved that the climate was not sufficiently equable to secure permanent and continued success. Governor Wright, in the letter quoted above, says, "the variable and uncertain weather in spring, makes it precarious," and facts amply confirm this statement. Only five hundred and forty-one pounds of raw silk were made this year, a smaller amount, with one exception, than had been produced for ten years. In 1769, the quantity was still more decreased, both from the reluctance of the people to raise worms, and the unfavorable weather in spring. Governor Wright, on the 20th of June, 1769, says, "We had a most extraordinary prospect, till the middle of April, when I thought every thing safe, yet we had very cold rains on the 17th and 18th, which were succeeded by hard black frost on the 19th and 20th, and destroyed a great part of the worms, and will reduce the silk very much." The silk business was now on the irretrievable decline, though it still maintained a nominal existence, and received the encouragement of Parliament. The special bounty which had hitherto been paid on cocoons, over and above their merchantable value, was suspended, and by a statute of 9 Geo. III., c. 38, a premium of twenty-five per cent. from the 1st of January, 1770, to the 1st of January, 1777,--of twenty per cent, from the 1st of January, 1777, to the 1st of January, 1784,--and of fifteen per cent. from the 1st of January, 1784, to the 1st of January 1791, on the ad valorem value of all silk produced in America and imported into Great Britain in vessels regularly navigated by law, was substituted in its place. The inhabitants of Ebenezer resumed the culture, which with them had long been dormant, and its revival at that time was principally owing to the influence of a very worthy man and magistrate, Mr. Wertsch, who, sanguine himself of ultimate success, had imparted to the Germans a portion of his own enthusiasm. In 1770, they shipped two hundred and ninety-one pounds of raw silk, the result of their own industry, and as the filature at Savannah was discontinued in 1771, the Earl of Hillsborough, ever anxious to advance the produce, warmly commended the zeal of the Saltzburgers, and directed President Habersham to distribute "the basins and reels that were left in the public filature, to such persons as Mr. Wertsch shall recommend to be proper objects of that bounty;" and in the same letter he promised that he would endeavor to procure for them, this year, "a small sum from Parliament, to be laid out in purchase of utensils for the assistance of the poor sort of people in your province." This promise he redeemed.