young’s TRAVELS IN FRANCE.

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•coons (twenty-eight ounces) ; eighty-four of them having been fpun from four and fivecocoons, gave twenty pounds and one-third (twelve ounces) of filk, lfronger and morefhining than common: the confumption of leaves, fourteen hundred and twenty pounds,of twenty-eight ounces. Wood ufed for fire, two thoufand eight hundred pounds; but thetwo rooms would have ferved for four ounces of feed. In the common method, with-out ftoves, the confumption of leaves is five hundred pounds for an ounce of feed, andthe medium produCt is not above fifteen pounds of cocoons ; and by this new method,the confumption of leaves has been feven hundred and ten pounds each ounce, and theproduce forty-fix and a quarter pounds of cocoons. Sixteen or feventeen cocoonsweigh an ounce in the common method, but in this only thirteen or fourteen. Thefilk cannot commonly be fpun from five or fix cocoons ; thele were fpun eafily fromfour or five, and might have been done from three or four. To gain a pound of filk,in common, five pounds of cocoons are neceifary ; but here the fame quantity has beengained from four pounds.

Lodi to Codogno . —In this dead level and watered diflrift there are very few mulber-ries ; none except near the villages ; many of them, not all, appear unhealthy, perhapsby reafon of their not exerting the fame attention as in Dauphine, where there are, inirrigated meadows, mounds made to keep the water from thefe trees.

Codogno to Crema,— -Mulberry trees here have large heads, as in Dauphine, inflead ofbeing pollarded incelfantly, as to the north of Milan.

r l here is an idea in the Milanefe, that filk was introduced by Ludovico il Moro .Francelco Muralto reports, “ Prcedia inculta injinita duobusfluminibus ad novalia (Ludo-•vicus'), reduxit inf nit as plantas Moronum ad conficiendas fetas , feu /ericas plantari feceratet illius artis in ducatu , primus fuit auftor It is faid to have been introduced intoEurope by fome Balilian monks from Sirinda, a city of Indoftan, to Conftantinople,under the Emperor Juftinian, in the year 550, by one account!; and by another, in525 J. In 1315, the manufactory of filk was brought in Florence to great perfection,bv the refugees of Lucca §; but during the fifteenth century no filk was made in Tuf-cany ; for all ufed in that period was foreign, filk worms being then unknown jj. In1474, they had eighty-four fhops that wrought gold and filver brocaded filks, whichwere exported to Lyons, Geneva, Spain, England, Germany , Turkey, Barbary, Afia,&c. Roger I., King of Sicily , about the year 1146 **, having conquered fome Gre-cian cities, brought the filk-weavers from thence into Palermo ; and the manufacturewas foon imitated by the people of Lucca , who took a bale of filk for their arms, withthe infeription— Dei minus diligenter curandum pro vita multorum ff. In 1525, the filkmanufacture at Milan employed twenty-five thoufand people ; and it feems to have aug-mented till 1558 JJ. In 1423, the republic of Florence took off the duty of entree uponmulberry leaves, and prohibited the exportation; and fome communities of Tufcanyhave records concerning filk anterior to that period §§.

In almoft all the diftriCts of the Milanefe mulberry trees are met with, very old, withtowering branches; among which are thofe of Sforzefca, planted under Ludovico ilMoro j|||, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century.

* Atli Societa Patriotica, vol. ii. p. 220. f Saggio fepra la Replica !a Raccolta della Foglia del Gelfo,

1777, p. i. \ Dizionario del Filugcllo, l2mo. 177J, p.43. § Ragionamente fopra Tofuina p. 49-

j) Decima, tom. ii. fez. j. cap. 4. Benedetto Dei . ** Giannone Storia Civ. Y. ii. lib. 11. cap. 7.

p. 219. Giulim, tom. v. p. 461. -ff Saggio, See. p. 56. ff Opufc. Scelte, vol. vii. p. 12. Bartolczzi.

§§ Corfu di sigricottura Pratica. Laflrt , tom. i. p. 28;. |||| Elementi d’ Agricoltura . Aj liter par, her,

tom. ii. p. 513.

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Venetian