"Oh my, yes. And perhaps you did not know what a difference there is in the weight of individual cocoons. This depends not alone on the species of silkworm raised, but also on the care that has been given it. A carefully fed caterpillar will grow larger and make a bigger cocoon. The same law holds with well cultivated flowers or with well tended live stock. Even persons show the results of proper nourishment. It is just so with silkworms. Cultivation tells. And not only does good care result in larger caterpillars and finer cocoons, but also in more silk. So the number of cocoons necessary to total a pound of raw silk vary. We cannot compute that, except roughly. But we do estimate that broadly speaking it takes about an acre of full grown mulberry trees to produce forty pounds of raw silk."
"How interesting!" exclaimed Pierre. "I never thought of measuring silk in mulberry trees."
"Not precisely in trees, but in their leaves," corrected Henri. "If you were a scientific sericulturist, as many men are, you would know just how many pounds of leaves you used each day; and you would work to economize them so as to get the largest possible yield of silk from the smallest possible outlay of leaves. All the big silk-growers manage their business that way."
Pierre sighed.
"My mother said that too," he returned. "But you see, we do not know enough to plan things so closely. However, it does not make much difference, for we have plenty of mulberry trees. With the number of silkworms we raise we never could use them all up. Years ago my father set out our grove, and each season he has added new trees to it until now it stretches from behind our house far down to the river."
"It would bring you in a lot of money if you ever wanted to sell it."
"Sell it!"
"Yes."
"But we'd never sell it!" retorted Pierre. "Pray, how should we live if we gave up raising silkworms?"