162 Captain T. Hutton on the 
I can do no more than indicate its existence and name it pro- 
visionally as Bombyx Arracanensis. 
Seeing, then, that this diversity exists among the worms, it is 
but reasonable to infer that in their native countries and in a state 
of nature, they did not all feed upon the same species of mulberry 
leaf, but that the annuals, like the wild Bombyx Huttoni of the 
Western Himalaya, were originally restricted to the trees indi- 
genous to the cold mountainous regions of the north of China, 
while the monthly worms were in like manner confined to species 
adapted to the greater heats of the southern lowland provinces. 
The question, then, as to which is the tree best adapted, in India 
or elsewhere, for the production of good silk, although apparently 
a very simple one, is in reality not easily answered, since much 
must depend upon the species of worm under cultivation, as well 
as upon the climate itself, and the difficulty is enhanced by the 
fact that every one who, possessed of much zeal but little know- 
ledge of the subject, essays to rear silkworms, appears to think it 
necessary to extol some particular species of mulberry, and to 
pronounce it, for the time, the very ne plus ultra of silkworm diet. 
One while it is the white-fruited mulberry only that can enable 
the insect to elaborate good silk, and anon, for some inexplicable 
whim, the white is discarded and another tree adopted in its stead. 
The purple-fruited species are unhesitatingly denounced, and to be 
* condemned without benefit of clergy.”* 
And yet the white mulberry is found to be nothing more than 
an Albino variety of the purple-fruited tree. 
Count Dandolo long since pointed this out ; and I have myself 
sown the seed of the dark purple mulberry, known to the natives 
as the “Szah Toot,” and found that several of the young plants 
produced therefrom eventually bore white fruit only, the shape 
and flavour being entirely changed, and in some respects the leaf 
also, To my surprise, moreover, three young trees, said to be 
from Cashmere, and which for the past three years had borne 
white fruit alone, were this season (1863) covered with purple 
fruit. 
The difference in the quality of silk reared respectively upon 
these two kinds—which are thus in reality not two, but one and 
the same—must be to a very great extent purely imaginary, and 
I will venture to assert that if two skeins of silk thus grown, that 
is to say, the one from the purple and the other from the white- 
fruited tree, were placed before any cultivator in India, he would 
not be able to distinguish between them. 
* Proc. Hort. Soc. of India, 10th August, 1859, vol. xi. part 1, p. 64. 
