“The past winter has been uncommonly severe on grape-vines and fruit; forest and mulberry trees; the Asiatic I found the most hardy of any other, and the Canton the earliest in foliage. On the 21st and 22d of May there were severe frosts, destroying garden vegetables, and injuring some early mulberry foliage; added to this, ice was formed in many places. The accounts from Vermont and New Hampshire are so disastrous as to delay early feeding; while in Northampton, June 14, at one of my plantations, you saw silk-worms in the act of winding, and others in a good state of forwardness. On the day of your departure, I received a letter from a distant silk grower, a staunch promoter of the _one early_ and _open_ crop system, that, on account of the unpropitious season and condition of his trees, he would delay fetching out his worms until the last of June, and then make his great effort upon one crop. “To provide against premature hatching of silk-worms, or the disaster of an early frost, it is advisable to have foliage gathered and dried the year preceding; which, being pulverized and moistened with water, may be given to the worms until new foliage appears; and they will eat it freely. “To obtain the most and best foliage of the mulberry, it will be necessary every Spring to cut or head them down within three or four inches of the ground, and preserve the stalks for _bark-silk_. I have a quantity of them saved with bark peeled from the large Asiatics to be used for making _bark-silk_, in addition to a quantity of mulberry-leaves preserved for making paper. The whole process, although not carried out, as yet, in this country, with either, has been successfully accomplished in France, from proof shown by M. Frassinet. I am endeavoring to have it tested here, by subjecting both stalk and peeled bark to the operation of steaming with soap and water, to facilitate the separation of the bark from the wood, and the outside cuticle from the fibrous substance of the bark, before trying the operation of the brake for dressing, carding, spinning, &c. Should it prove successful, it will be made public (See Mr. Zinke’s process, Chapter XI.). Hopes are entertained that what has been done may be done again; that Yankee ingenuity and perseverance may prove a match for foreign cheap labor(?).