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XIV. On the Reversion and Restoration of the Silkworm 
(Part I1.); with Distinctive Characters of Eighteen 
Species of Silk-producing Bombycide. By Captain 
Tuomas Hutron, F.G.S., of Mussooree. (Com- 
municated by Mr. F. Moors.) 
{Read December Sth, 1864.] 
Accorpiné to hitherto received notions all the silkworms now 
under domestication are mere varieties of one species, and are all 
placed together under the name of Bombyx Mori; and yet the 
difference in habits is alone sufficient to point out the existence of 
several totally distinct species. 
This circumstance, when some time since noticed by myself in 
a letter to Mr. F. Moore of the India Museum, elicited the 
acknowledgment that Entomologists in Europe had long suspected 
the fact, but that they were without the means of working out all 
the necessary details, many of the supposed species not being 
under cultivation in Europe, while no one in India had deemed it 
worth while to enter into an investigation of the subject. 
From the moment, however, in which I first recognized the 
absolute necessity of endeavouring to arrest the rapid strides 
which disease was making towards the extinction of the silkworm, 
I became aware, from actual inspection of the worms through all 
their changes, of the existence of several species, and I at once 
determined systematically to set to work for the purpose of ex- 
tricating each from the dark labyrinth of error and confusion in 
which it had become involved. 
Any one at all conversant with the Bombycide must be aware 
of the fact that, for the most part, the species will, in the northern 
and colder districts of their respective countries, be either strictly 
annuals, or at the most double-brooded, while those species which 
yield several crops of silk during the year, indicate thereby that 
they were originally imported into the localities where they are 
now domesticated, from the warm and more prolific lowland 
regions of the South. A rapid succession of crops, whether of 
vegetables or of silk, such as we witness among what are in Bengal 
termed “ monthly worms,” is obtainable only, whether naturally 
or artificially, in a mild climate favourable to the rapid growth of 
vegetation. To the preservation of such species, when in a state 
