426 Dr. Wallace on the Ouk-feeding 
and that although, up to this time, we have not succeeded in Eng- 
land in rearing this worm, yet we have good grounds for expec- 
tation that asa greater knowledge of its habits, and of the precau- 
tions necessary to a successful cultivation is diffused (one of the 
objects of this memoir), we shall find many votaries of this new cul- 
ture in Great Britain and Ireland, not merely among Entomolo- 
gists, but among those interested in natural science and industrial 
pursuits, and especially among the fair sex,* who have in all times, 
even from the earliest domestication of the mulberry worm, been 
foremost in their devotion to the cultivation of silkworms. Nor 
will the progress of this new culture stop here. Interesting and 
beautiful in appearance, it is also very valuable; for enough has 
been stated to prove that the silk, which is easily wound from the 
cocoon, is almost, if not entirely, equal in value to the best mul- 
berry silk, and that the culture, if successful, will be most remu- 
nerative. Whata boon for this country! What a blessing for the 
women and children, if another extensive and remunerative source 
of labour is opened up to their nimble and skilful fingers! | What 
a relief to our purely agricultural villages and districts, whose great 
complaint is the want of manufactures, 7. e., the want of the in- 
crease in wages and employment which accompanies the spread 
of a manufacture! What a precious utilization of a material, at 
the present moment utterly without value, viz. oak leaves! What 
a valuable and fairy-like change, through the medium of an in- 
sect, from an oak leaf into a silken fibre !—the conversion of 
thousands of oak coppices, and even of the oak pollards in our 
hedges, into a precious fabric! Truly it seems a dream, and had 
such a statement, ten years ago, been put forward, it would have 
been laughed at and derided. Nay, I doubt not even now many 
will be unable to credit the statements I have made, and the vista 
which I have disclosed; yet at no distant date success will surely 
follow our experiments, and English sericiculture will be placed 
ill, may reasonably be supposed to have similarly affected those of the 
Yamamai. Certain it is that both races did badly that year. 
The statement, therefore, that the Yamamai is already acclimatized in 
Europe must be considerably modified, and the experience of several years 
of success is required before such can be positively asserted. 
* The empress of China, See Ling See, about 2,700 B.c., was the first to 
unravel the silk from the cocoon of B. Mori; and we find the name of Pam- 
phila, a native lady of Cos, associated with the first weaving of silken 
fabrics in Europe. Vide Dr. Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopadia, Silk Manufac- 
tures, p. 2. & 
