382 MODERN CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS. 
tails of the hind wings, resembles that of the Emperor moth, except 
that the warts on the segments are smaller (Abbott and Smith). 
The common silkworm (jig. 105. 10.), which is the larva of Bombyx 
Mori (fig. 105. 12.), is too well known to need description. Ac- 
cording to Latreille, who has minutely investigated the history of silk 
culture, this moth was a native of the northern provinces of China, 
whence, in the reign of Justinian, it was imported by the missionaries 
to Constantinople, and thence to Sicily, and to other parts of the 
south of Europe, where it has long been an extensive object of com- 
merce, and where the greatest care is taken in the management and 
rearing of it. Silkworm gut, sc much used by anglers, is also manu- 
factured from the larve. 
It would be out of place in this work to enter into any details re- 
lative to the history of the silk trade, or of the manufacturing process. 
I shall therefore only allude to the remarkably sluggish character of 
the perfect insect, and the absence of any disposition on the part of 
the caterpillar to wander from the trays on which it is fed, peculiari- 
ties which eminently fit it, as suggested by Mr. Sells, for the subject 
of so extensive an occupation. 
The following stanza relative to the habits of the silkworm in the 
Welsh language is a literary curiosity, being entirely composed of 
vowels. 
O'i wiw wy i weué a, ai weuau I perish by my art, 
O'i wyau a weua; Dig my own grave; 
E’ weua ei we aia’, I spin my thread of life, 
A’i weuau yw ieuau ia. My death I weave. 
The silkworm has been long known in the south of Europe to be 
subject to a disease called muscardine, which destroys the insect, and 
at the same time covers the body with a white efflorescence. The real 
nature of this disease remained unascertained until 1835, when M. 
Bassi proved it to be a minute fungus (Botrytis Bassiana) in a state 
of vegetation, which had by degrees occupied the whole of the interior 
of the body, and then burst through the skin. M. V. Audouin has 
followed up this singular discovery by numerous experiments and mi- 
produced from one pupa, which was large, being full two inches long, and one thick. 
Wm. Knott, Esq. has informed me of an instance, in which two chrysalides of 
the Emperor moth were contained in one cocoon; and several (two, and even as 
many as three or four) chrysalides of the lackey-moth have been obseryed in a 
large common cocoon by Mr. Marshall, as he has himself i1.formed me. 
