AILANTHUS SILK-WOKM. 359 



troduce the Silurus into the Thames. It is a pond-fish, 

 and will only be placed in ponds. He is much too 

 valuable to be placed in the Thames. There are plenty 

 of ponds about full of wretched roach and dace, that 

 breed naturally to an enormous extent. Master Silurus 

 is just the boy to keep these fellows in order. Besides, 

 please recollect that in his native home he lives prin- 

 cipally upon/roys." 



Both in England and France persevering efforts are 

 being made to introduce the ailanthus silk-worm (Bom- 

 byx cynihia}. Among the successful experiments is 

 that of Lady Dorothy Neville at Dangstein, near Pet- 

 ersfield, Hants. Mr Buckland thus describes his visit 

 to her plantation : 



" Her ladyship has set apart a portion of her beauti- 

 ful and well-ordered garden, and has planted it with 

 the young ailanthus trees, covering them over with a 

 light canvass-made building a precaution rendered 

 necessary by the birds, which pick off the young worms. 

 On entering this building I saw for the first time the 

 living worms ; they were in the highest state of perfec- 

 tion, and really beautiful things to look at ; not white- 

 faced pale-looking things, like the common silk- worm, 

 but magnificent fellows, from two and a half to three 

 inches long, of an intense emerald-green colour, with 

 the tubercles tipped with a gorgeous marine-blue. Her 

 ladyship pointed out to me how the silk- worms held on 

 to the leaves ; they cared nothing for rain, less for the 

 wind. Their feet have greater adhesive powers than 

 the suckers of the cuttle-fish, and their bodies are co- 

 vered with a fine down, which turns the rain-drops, 

 like the tiny hairs on the leaf of the cabbage. Lady 

 Dorothy Neville explained how readily, and at what 

 little expense, they were cultivated, and that she had 

 found a ready market for all the cocoons she could 

 grow a gentleman in Paris having offered to take all 

 she could supply for French manufactures." 



