THE WILD SILKS OF INDIA. 



CHAPTER I. 



Classification of Wild Silkworms. 



The term wild silks of India must be regarded as 

 applying to all species of silk other than that produced by 

 the Bombyx mori, the worm which feeds on the mulberry 

 leaf, from which is obtained the silk of commerce by regular 

 organised industries in Bengal, France, China, Japan, Italy, 

 Persia, Siam, and in some other parts of the world. 



For the most part, if not almost entirely, at present, the 

 worms which produce these wild silks feed on the leaves of 

 trees and plants which grow wild in the jungles and forests 

 of India, or at any rate are not cultivated for silkworm 

 food. 



An impetus was given to the utilisation of these silks 

 by the displaj 7 of some of the most important of them at 

 the Paris Exhibition in 1878, by Her Majesty's Government 

 of India, in a collection which I had the honour of being- 

 appointed to arrange. 



Since that time, as new uses have been found for 

 Tusser silk, one of the chief and most widely spread of 

 Indian wild silks, the question of supply has become a most 

 important one. 



The object of the present collection and of this Handbook 

 is to draw public attention to the growing importance of 

 the subject, and to present in as concise a form as its wide 

 range will permit all information likely to be of either 

 scientific or practical use. 



It is believed the time is near when, by the aid of enter- 

 prise and capital, several species of the wild silks of India, 

 not yet exported to England, will become as organised a 

 production as the mulberry-fed silks, or the tea and cinchona 

 planting of India ; and this, not by simply collecting cocoons 

 produced by the silkworms in their wild state, but by the 

 systematic plantation of suitable food trees, careful attention 

 to the rearing and breeding of the worms, the proper and 

 timely collection of the cocoons, the application of proper 

 reeling machinery, the collection of all the imperfect cocoons 



Q 3255. A 



