72 Mr. A. B. Farn on the 



the moths, but reeled off all his silk, and went to the egg-rearer 

 for his next year's supply of seed. This new departure was the 

 primary cause of the resulting terrible loss to the silk -rearers, 

 although it was a trade profitable enough to the egg-rearers. 

 Under this fresh division of labour things went smoothly enough 

 for a year or two, and then came almost total failure of the silk 

 crop. The seed which had been so successfully reared to silk 

 suddenly became bad in the extreme, and the strain obtained an 

 unenviable fame. The seed-rearers went further afield into dis- 

 tricts where the healthiness of the silkworms promised a supply 

 of healthy seed ; for a year or two this fresh locality furnished 

 excellent seed, to be again followed by disaster once more. 

 Driven from this place, the seed-merchant then made a fresh 

 start somewhere else, and again history repeated itself — disaster 

 in two or three years. Always extending their sphere of opera- 

 tions, the seed-merchants were always attended by disease within 

 a short period, and with almost total failure of the worms hatched 

 from the eggs they supplied. France, Spain, Italy, Syria, the 

 Caucasian Provinces, Wallachia, Moldavia, and other countries 

 were in turn invaded by the seed-merchants, to be closely fol- 

 lowed by the disease, until at last it was to Japan alone that the 

 seed-merchants could look for good seed. China would have 

 nothing to say to them, and wisely, and they could not obtain a 

 footing m that country. 



Pasteur attributes, and rightly, the extension and intensity of 

 Pebrine to the following : — There had always been a certain 

 amount of the disease among silkworms, but causing only a rela- 

 tively trifling amount of damage ; and this damage would have 

 doubtless continued but trifling if each silk-rearer had adhered to 

 that good old plan of each year saving some of his healthiest 

 cocoons for eggs. As I have before remarked, he then knew the 

 family history, and that upon the healthiness of the eggs de- 

 pended his silk harvest of the ensuing year, and he took his pre- 

 cautions accordingly. 



But with the seed-merchant it was far otherwise ; he had no 

 concern as to the production of silk, and could view with a 

 certain amount of equanimity failure of the silk crop, provided 

 he had an enormous number of eggs to sell. The larger the 

 number of eggs the more he could sell, and so in rearing-houses, 

 having no failure of silk before his eyes, he would rear two, 

 three, or more ounces of seed where a prudent silk-rearer, 

 realizing the damaging effect of overcrowding of silkworms, 

 would have accommodated but one ounce of seed. And Pebrine, 

 ever present, though under normal conditions of rearing a disease 

 of no great moment, became in these overcrowded houses de^ 

 veloped to a degree which in a few years threatened ruin to the 

 silk-rearers who purchased seed from these overcrowded houses. 



