Hot Springs Weekly Star

Food That Seems to Satisfy the Usual Little Spinner Perfectly.

Professor C. W. Woodworth of the State University is engaged in breeding silkworms which will thrive on lettuce. It appears that the leaf of the lettuce is a nutritive equivalent, or nearly so, of the leaf of the white mulberry, and is a much cheaper product, besides being available at all seasons of the year. The fact, however, that the lettuce and mulberry leaf are chemically nearly identical does not by any means prove that the silkworm will thrive upon lettuce or that the quality of the silk produced will equal that produced on the natural food of the worm. We do not yet know enough about the physiology of digestion to say in advance what can or what cannot be done. Neither is it certain that the natural period of producing silk can be materially extended or changed. It is the business of the experiment station to find out such things.

There is no reason to doubt that in any case a strain of silkworm can be produced whose digestive apparatus shall be adapted to a lettuce diet or that by due process of selection a good quality of silk can finally be produced in that way. Where the outlook is so promising it is the duty of the experiment stations to investigate. Comparatively few experiments bring results of much economic importance, but some do bring such results and all contribute to the sum of human knowledge. Whether or not the silk industry can be made commercially profitable in any country so sparsely inhabited as California is uncertain, but Professor Woodworth's experiments are certainly of importance to the industry and as such are worth making whether the people of this State derive immediate profit from them or not.

-San Francisco Chronicle.