of two and a half pounds of green leaf to one pound of growth.
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.
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Fig. 186.—Providing places for silkworms to spin their cocoons.
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
