170 Captain T. Hutton on the 
about three weeks afterwards, or even less, the same tree will be 
found to have again put on an abundant and healthy foliage ready 
for the second or autumnal brood of the same worm. ‘This some- 
times goes on year after year without the least apparent injury to 
the tree, and even the cultivated kinds are often stripped of every 
leaf and berry by the monkeys (Semnopithecus schistaceus), and 
yet put forth a second crop of both. What, therefore, Nature 
does, man may surely, in similar situations and under similar cir- 
cumstances, imitate with like success. 
Many things, indeed, in regard to the rearing of the silkworm, 
have passed into laws without the persons who adopt them having 
the slightest notion why they have done so, or even caring to 
reason on the subject ;—thus we have one law forbidding more 
than a certain degree of denudation of the foliage, which is strictly 
applicable to northern climates only, and necessitates the planting 
of an additional number of trees, Then, again, another law 
enjoins that no moisture must remain upon the leaf for fear of 
injury to the worm; and yet in a state of nature we must feel 
assured that the leaves are often wet with rain and dew without 
doing injury to the worms that feed upon them; why then are 
they injured when in a state of domestication? Simply because 
Nature always feeds her worms with the best and freshest leaves, 
and in that state no injury ensues, as I indeed have often proved 
even with domesticated worms; but if the leaves, as is too gene- 
rally the case, from being closely packed, brought from a distance 
in the heat, and kept for hours before they are given to the 
worms, have begun to fade and lose their natural freshness, the 
moisture on them, by imbibing the exhaling gasses, will act as an 
active poison on the worm and kill it. 
Again, where the temperature of the rooms can be kept down 
to 80° of Fahrenheit, it is obstinately asserted that the constitu- 
tion of the worm cannot suffer; yet such reasoners forget that in 
a warm climate they can only keep down the temperature by 
shutting up the house and excluding heat, and that in so doing 
they cause malaria to arise among the worms and ordure by the 
exclusion of every breath of that pure fresh air which is so 
essential to the insect’s healthy existence. 
Lastly, chopped leaves must likewise be compassionately given 
to the new-born worms, for fear the hardness of the leaf should 
hurt their gums, and give the tender brats the tooth-ache.* Nota 
* Journ. Hort. Soc. of India, vol. x. part 2, p. 182. 
