Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and JapanKing, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Science
Farmers of Forty Centuries; Or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea, and Japan
King, F. H. (Franklin Hiram)
Agriculture -- China; Agriculture -- Japan; Agriculture -- Korea
According to Paton, the cocoons from the 700,000 worms would weigh
between 1400 and 2100 pounds and these, according to the
observations of Hosie in the province of Szechwan, would yield about
one-twelfth their weight of raw silk. On this basis the one pound of
worms hatched from the eggs would yield between 116 and 175 pounds
of raw silk, worth, at the Japanese export price for 1907, between
$550 and $832, and 164 pounds of green mulberry leaves would be
required to produce a pound of silk.
A Chinese banker in Chekiang province, with whom we talked, stated
that the young worms which would hatch from the eggs spread on a
sheet of paper twelve by eighteen inches would consume, in coming to
maturity, 2660 pounds of mulberry leaves and would spin 21.6 pounds
of silk. This is at the rate of 123 pounds of leaves to one pound of
silk. The Japanese crop for 1907, 26,072,000 pounds, produced on
957,560 acres, is a mean yield of 27.23 pounds of raw silk per acre
of mulberries, and this would require a mean yield of 4465 pounds of
green mulberry leaves per acre, at the rate of 164 pounds per pound
of silk.
Ordinary silk in these countries is produced largely from three
varieties of mulberries, and from them there may be three pickings
of leaves for the rearing of a spring, summer and autumn crop of
silk. We learned at the Nagoya Experiment Station, Japan, that there
good spring yields of mulberry leaves are at the rate of 400 kan,
the second crop, 150 kan, and the third crop, 250 kan per tan,
making a total yield of over thirteen tons of green leaves per acre.
This, however, seems to be materially higher than the average for
the Empire.
In Fig. 188 is a near view of a mulberry orchard in Chekiang
province, which has been very heavily fertilized with canal mud, and
which was at the stage for cutting the leaves to feed the first crop
of silkworms. A bundle of cut limbs is in the crotch of the front
tree in the view. Those who raise mulberry leaves are not usually
the feeders of the silkworms and the leaves from this orchard were
being sold at one dollar, Mexican, per picul, or 32.25 cents per one
hundred pounds. The same price was being paid a week later in the
vicinity of Nanking, Kiangsu province.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account