144 Captain T. Hutton on the 
In experimenting upon the worm I have not confined my efforts 
within the narrow limits of an endeavour to cure particular phases 
of disease, but to effect a permanent benefit in the restoration of a 
healthy and vigorous constitution, which, if accomplished, as I 
think it may be, will of itself not only cast out this or that par- 
ticular phase of disease, but all the diseases under which the worm 
is now labouring ; and I am fully convinced that until such radical 
change has been wrought, it will be but time and labour thrown 
away to seek to cure particular maladies as they appear. 
Hitherto the results of my experiments have been such as to 
warrant my entertaining the most sanguine hopes of ultimate 
success, provided the same system be carried on for a few years 
longer, when it will of course depend upon the cultivator to main- 
tain the advantages thus secured. 
Of all the groups comprised within the family of the Bombycide 
that in which the genus Bombyx is contained, is, perhaps, in a 
commercial point of view, the most interesting and the most 
valuable. This genus contains, besides a few wild indigenous 
species widely scattered over the continent of India, all those long 
domesticated species popularly known as “ silkworms,” which were 
centuries ago imported into Europe from the northern provinces 
of China, where for many centuries previously they had likewise 
been kept in a state of domestication. 
Having, however, already, in a paper entitled ‘ Notes on the 
Silkworms of India,” entered somewhat fully into the history of 
the Chinese species, J] need not here travel over the same ground, 
but shall call attention to facts not previously noticed, and en- 
deavour, after exposing the folly of insisting, as some still ob- 
stinately do, upon the healthy and vigorous constitution of the 
insects, to show by how very simple a method the worms may be 
induced to revert from their present artificial and moribund con- 
dition to one of vigour and permanent health, 
Discovery of the Silkworm. 
According to the commonly received chronology the discovery 
of the silkworm in China was made about the year B.c. 2640; and 
the means of reeling off, or unwinding the fibre from the cocoon, 
being also discovered, the regular domestication of the insect at 
once commenced. 
Whether the species then discovered was, in reality, that to 
which naturalists have since assigned the name of Bombyx Mori, 
or whether the discovery of more than one species then occurred, we 
have now no means of positively ascertaining; nor, indeed, does it 
