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GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. it commands a special mention which would be invidious in other branches of the silk fabrication. The sons, eight in number, of a farmer in South Manchester, after the custom of the town had cultivated mulberry-trees and raised silk worms in their boyhood. Some remained at home, while others were scattered, but only to return. For four or five years previously to 1838. four of the brothers had been raising silk-worms and producing silk, like their neighbors. In that year they started a small silk-mill at South Manchester, for the purpose of making sewing-silk. Their increasing interest in the silk-culture, however, led them to suspend the operations of the mill for a time, when three of the brothers re moved temporarily to Burlington, New Jersey, where they established nurseries and cocooneries, and published a magazine known as the Silk-Grower's Manual. Their energy having, however, been mainly devoted to planting nurseries of the multicaulis, and their plans having been frustrated by the explosion of that bubble, in 1839 they returned to their forsaken mill at South Manchester, and resumed the work of making sewing-silk from imported raw silk. Subsequently, they were rejoined by others of the family, who had established mulberry plan tations in Florida and Ohio. We do not propose to follow the steps by which this establishment reached its present vast expansion. Suc cess came slowly, and after many discouragements, and with it an enlargement of their operations. In 1854 a mill was built in Hart ford. Buildings were added at South Manchester, new machinery and methods invented and imported, while new branches of manufacture were added to that of sewing-silk. The main feature of the manufac ture in time came to be the working into every conceivable fabric that form of silk known here as spun silk, and on the Continent of Europe as chappe. This is silk spun from pierced cocoons, floss, and waste, and whatever cannot be reeled. The fabrics from this material, though wanting in the high lustre of those made from reeled silk, are remark able for their wearing qualities, their beauty actually increasing with wear. The extensive use of this material for dress goods and ribbons is quite recent; but these fabrics, as now made by Messrs. Cheney Brothers, are recognized as cheaper and better than any goods of their grade in the market. The leading articles produced in this es tablishment are black and colored gros-grain silks, which have ob tained a wide-spread reputation for their cheapness and good wearing qualities, as compared with imported goods of corresponding grades and weight. Ribbons of all colors and widths, which are among the most popular brands in the market, and a great variety of silks for the millinery and trimming trade,—for parasols, and for hat and fur