than the common Italian silks.” Assurance was given that there was the utmost reason to afford “all possible encouragement for the raising of so valuable a commodity.”[23] In 1764 fifteen thousand two hundred and twelve pounds of cocoons were delivered at the Filature in Savannah, then under the charge of Mr. Ottolenghe, of which eight thousand six hundred and ninety-five pounds were contributed by the Saltzburgers. In 1766 the production of silk in Georgia reached its acme, and from that time, despite the encouragement extended by Parliament, continued to decline until it was practically abandoned a few years before the inception of the Revolution. Operations at the Filature in Savannah were discontinued in 1771; and Sir James Wright, in his message to the Commons House of Assembly, under date 19th of January, 1774, alludes to the fact that the Filature buildings were falling into decay, and suggests that they be put to some other use. Despite the disinclination existing in other portions of the Colony to devote much time and labor to the growing of trees and the manufacture of silk, the Saltzburgers,—incited by their worthy magistrate, Mr. Wertsch,—redoubled their efforts, and in 1770, as the result of their industry, shipped two hundred and ninety-one pounds of raw-silk. At the suggestion of the Earl of Hillsborough, who warmly commended the zeal of these Germans and interested himself in procuring from Parliament a small sum to be expended in aid of the more indigent of the community, Mr. Habersham distributed among them the basins and reels then being in the unused public Filature in Savannah. “So popular had the silk business become at Ebenezer that Mr. Habersham, in a letter dated the 30th of March, 1772, says: ‘Some persons in almost every family there understand its process from the beginning to the end.’ In 1771 the Germans sent four hundred and thirty-eight pounds of raw silk to England, and in 1772 four hundred and eighty-five pounds:—all of their own raising. They made their own reels, which were so much esteemed that one was sent to England as a model, and another taken to the East Indies by Pickering Robinson.”[24] In the face of the distractions encountered upon the commencement of hostilities between the Colonies and the Mother Country, silk culture languished even among these Germans, and was never afterwards revived to any considerable degree. The unfriendliness of climate, the high price of labor, the withdrawal of all bounty—which had been the chief stimulus to exertion,—and the larger profits to be derived from the cultivation of rice and cotton combined to interrupt silk-raising, and, in the end, caused its total abandonment.