PROCEEDINGS OP THE THIRD ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING ' 82 I 



femelle dont les ovaires sent envahis ; de la le parasite gagne tous les 

 autres organes du ver sans exception." 



If we accept the theory of Dr. Sasaki, then a caterpillar which has 

 been infected with pebrine in the embryo, hatches out with pebrine in 

 its organs. If the disease is acute, pebrine spores may be seen only in 

 a part of the tissues of one of its organs, in the whole organ or in all 

 the organs and in the worst case it will die of exhaustion before maturity. 

 If the caterpillar is very mildly infested and if the surrounding conditions 

 are favourable for the growth of the pebrine corpuscles the worm may 

 die of the disease, but if the conditions are not favourable then a case 

 may happen in which pebrine corpuscles may remain in the generative 

 organ only ; so that hereditary elimination of pebrine is not possible 

 in all cases if the mid-gut only is examined. Our experience at Pusa 

 is that we can get perfectly healthy caterpillars and moths from the 

 eggs of a pebrinized mother-moth, whose ovaries have been affected 

 with pebrine, if the worms are carefully attended to. 



I have reared eggs of pebrinized moths rather carelessly and examined 

 the body of the caterpillars excluding the alimentary canals and the 

 alimentary canals separately from the third to the fifth stages. In 175 

 cases I could not see any pebrine spores in either of them. In 11 cases I 

 saw innumerable spores in the alimentary canal but very few in the 

 body. In 89 cases I found innumerable spores in the body but few in 

 the alimentary canal. 



If the leaves are smeared with pebrine spores and then fed to the 

 worms of the 5th stage they consume a large quantity of spores and 

 naturally more pebrine corpuscles are found in the gut than in the body 

 cavity when the worms are changed into moths. 



25 layings of the Mysore race, laid by moths which were infected 

 with pebrine very mildly (only one spore and sometimes not a single 

 one was visible in a field of the microscope at the time of the examination 

 of the moths), were reared in March. The worms were quite healthy 

 and about 4 per cent, of the moths were found to be pebrinized. 



2. Iftfection through food. 

 Pasteur and other savants observed long ago that silkworms are 

 infected with pebrine by taking the pebrine corpuscles with leaves. 

 The absorption of food takes place in the alimentary canal and naturally 

 the corpuscles at first multiply in that part of the wall of the alimentary 

 canal which has been infested first and then they attack the organs 

 close to it. The multiplication of pebrine will not be necessarily in all 

 the parts of the alimentary canal first and then in other organs. Cases 

 may occur in which infection is very mild in the mid-gut and detection 



