WILD SILKWORMS. 93 



The late Mr. Frank Buckland thus describes a visit he paid to 

 the ailanthery of Lady Dorothy Nevill : "Her ladyship has set 

 apart a portion of her beautiful and well-wooded garden, and has 

 planted it with young Ailanthus trees, covering them over with a 

 light canvas-made building : a precaution rendered necessary by 

 the birds, who pick off the young worms. On entering the 

 building I saw, for the first time, the living worms ; they were in 

 the highest state of perfection, and really beautiful things to look 

 at : not white-faced, pale-looking things like the common silkworm, 

 but magnificent fellows from two and a half to three inches long, 

 of an intense emerald green colour, with tubercles tipped with a 

 gorgeous marine blue. Her ladyship pointed out to me how the 

 silkworms held on to the leaves ; they cared nothing for the rain, 

 less for the wind ; their feet have greater adhesive power than the 

 suckers of the cuttle-fish, and their bodies are covered with a fine 

 down [rather powder] which turns the rain drops like the tiny hairs 

 on the leaf of the cabbage. Many of them had made their 

 cocoons, picking out snug, quiet corners, and were working away 

 like diligent and useful weavers as they are." 



Dr. Wallace's plantation was on the railway embankment 

 between Colchester and Wivenhoe. Here, in 1864, he planted 

 3,000 trees, two-year-old seedlings which he had obtained from 

 France. By the next year 1,340 of these had attained a sufficient 

 size and luxuriance to be used for feeding purposes ; the insects 

 were placed upon them and, as the result of the first brood, a crop 

 5,368 cocoons was obtained, an average of about four cocoons to 

 a tree. But there are many drawbacks to rearing insects in the 

 open air in this way. Dr. Wallace thus refers to one difficulty 

 which caused him some perplexity for a time : " I was much 

 vexed to find some of my finest larvae, when nearly full fed, 

 mutilated in a very strange manner ; they were resting on a leaf 

 as usual, but with head erect and face looking black. On closer 

 inspection, I found the face eaten away, and nearly gone, and a 

 brownish ichor exuding from the wound ; in a few days they died, 

 starved, being unable to eat. I was puzzled for some days ; but 

 observing that this always took place at night, and that I never 

 found any larvae so attacked in the day-time, I suspected a new 

 enemy other than I knew of. Taking my lantern, I sallied out 

 when it was dark, to make a close examination ; I found the 

 common large garden Carabiis violaceus [one of the ground 

 beetles] fastened to the face of a larva, sucking its juices : 

 whether it selected that part for attack I know not, but I am 

 inclined to think, from the habit of the larva to turn round and 

 face any object which touches it, after the manner of the larva of 



