64 DIRECT BENEFITS FROM MOTHS. 



Hindoos Asseau, are guarded by the natives with the 

 most unwearied solicitude : for^by day, they are the 

 prey of crows and other insectivorous birds, while, 

 by night, they are eagerly sought after by bats. 



The Arrindy Silk Worm (the Phalana Cynthia of 

 Drury) spins cocoons of an extremely soft texture. 

 The filaments are so excessively delicate and glossy, 

 that they cannot be unwound by the ordinary process, 

 but are spun in the same manner as cotton ; and 

 afterwards manufactured into a loose and coarse kind 

 of white cloth. The durability of this thriftless look- 

 ing material exceeds all credibility a lifetime being 

 barely sufficient to wear out a dress made of it. The 

 natives use it for packing sheets, as well as clothes. 



Besides the species above named, there are others 

 to be met with in China, from which silk is procured ; 

 for we find, in Young's Annals of Agriculture,* an 

 extract of a letter, from which it appears, that a 

 recent introduction of them from that country into 

 India has taken place. " We have," says the writer, 

 " obtained a monthly Silk Worm from China, which 

 I have reared with my own hands, and in twenty-five 

 days have had the cocoons in my basins, and by the 

 twenty-ninth or thirty-first day a new progeny feeding 

 in my trays. This makes it a prize to whoever would 

 undertake the cultivation of it." 



In the Philotophical Transactions,^ we have an 



* Annals of Agriculture, vol. xxiii. p. 235. 

 f Phil Trans, for 1759, p. 54. 



