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SILK IN ASSAM.* 



ASSAM AS A SOURCE OF SUPPLY TO THE ENGLISH MARKET. 



Commercial ivorthlessness of the Wild Silkworms of Asscmi. — 

 Some misapprehension seems to prevail among English silk- 

 spinners with regard to the nature of the silkworms which furnish 

 the silks of Assam. I find the domesticated iimga and eri included 

 in Mr. Wardle's pamphlet on the wild silks of India ; while in 

 a lecture on silk-spinning, delivered in the Technical College, 

 Glasgow, the tusser worm is alluded to as generally cultivated in 

 this province. A similar misconception (so far as Assam is con- 

 cerned) appears to pervade the Resolutions of the Goverment of 

 India of the 23rd November, 1875, and of the 28th February, 

 1879, directing attention to undomesticated silk-spinning worms 

 in general and to the tusser silkworm in particular, and asking 

 for certain information regarding them. The information re- 

 quired will be found in the second part of this note ; but in 

 treating of the silks of Assam it is desirable to make clear at the 

 outset that from the wild silkworms of Assam, as they now exist, 

 nothing whatever is to be expected. They may possess a scientific 

 interest, but they are certainly destitute of all commercial value, 

 present or perspective. Their cocoons in the wild state are not 

 to be found in numbers anything like sufficient to repay the cost 

 of collecting, or to furnish the slightest hope that they will ever 

 be able to supply the English market. It is exceedingly doubtful 

 whether by the most strenuous efforts one hundredweight of wild 

 cocoons of all sorts could be collected in the whole of the Assam 

 Valley. The commonest of all is the variety of tusser, called 

 kutkuri in Assam, and this is so rare that virtually one never 

 hears of it. In times previous to the British rule this worm 

 used to be cultivated to a small extent in the vicinity of Jorhat, 

 but it has long fallen out of fashion; and in 1877 the Chief 

 Commissioner of Assam was of opinion that to attempt to create 

 a tusser silk industry in this province would be simply to court 

 failure. More recently the failure of Major Coussmaker's 

 operations in the Deccan has proved the futility of attempting to 

 make anything out of tusser in Assam, where it is vastly less 



* Extract from report of Mr. E. Stack, Director of Agriculture in Assam, 



