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ON SERICICULTURE. 



By Alexander Wallace, M.D. 



I TAKE up my pen again at this season to state briefly wbat 

 has been done during; the present year in Sericicultuie — a 

 subject of considerable" magnitude in a commercial and 

 manufacturing point of view — one, therefore, that ought to 

 excite much more Entomological attention than it has hitherto 

 done in this country. The little insignificant Lepidopteron 

 Bombyx Moj^i is, nevertheless, when properly treated, a 

 mine of inexhaustible riches. At the shrine, therefore, of 

 that insect, the " facile princeps," in a pecuniary sense, of 

 all useful Lepidoptera, all Entomological worshippers of 

 Mammon should pay their devotions, while to those who 

 love pure science its economy presents a problem, hitherto 

 unsolved, well worthy of their attention, in the shape of a 

 dire disease that has crippled the silk resources of the Con- 

 tinent for the past fifteen years, and, while materially in- 

 creasing the price of silk, has greatly depreciated its quality. 



I trust, therefoi'e, that my brief remarks on the insect 

 may, in Great Britain and her colonies, induce more atten- 

 tion to its economy and pi'oduction. On the subject of the 

 disease I have only to remark that its virulence considerably 

 abated in the season of 1869; that in this country, in Egypt, 

 Austraha, California, and, I believe, the Cape of Good 



1870. L 



