88 REPORT— 1839. 



^vrinkled part of the body to which the head is attached, quite black, 

 and the skin of the neck thickened and tough like leather. Again, as 

 the heavy and damp weather continued, a disease occurred, affecting 

 the two front and two hind rings of the body, by producing an 

 unnatural and evidently very painful contraction of the parts, and a 

 corresponding enlargement of the four middle rings, which usually 

 ended in the sac bursting, and of course destroying the insect. It may 

 be remarked, that the pulsation visible along the back of the Avorms 

 was, in the case of those fed upon lettuce, reduced to 20 and 25 beats 

 a minute : in order to ascertain whether this arose from the food, some 

 were fed with mulberry, while the rest were continued upon lettuce. 

 The former exhibited a daily increase in the pulsation of about 5 

 beats ; until, at the end of three or four days, the muscular expansion 

 and contraction along the back was of the usual quickness, i. e. 40 to 

 45 beats a minute ; which was what those fed entirely on mulberry 

 leaves invariably exhibited. 



The time of spinning in Italy is usually six weeks after hatching. 

 In Nottingham the earliest did not spin until eight weeks after hatch- 

 ing ; but such as were originally fed upon lettuce did not spin until 

 those fed entirely on mulberry had finished their cocoons ; the lives of 

 the former were therefore protracted full three weeks beyond the 

 latter. 



The cocoons being placed in contrast with those (also on the table 

 of the Section) of this year's growth, just received from the Milanese, 

 presented but slight inferiority in size, weight, or compact formation. 

 Of those grown in Nottingham, it took an average of 300 to weigh a 

 pound, while of the best French or Italian, it takes at least 250. The 

 English acclimated cocoons weighing, when dry, I to 1^ grains, fed 

 upon lettuce and mulberry ; those of Bengal, 1 to 2^ grains, fed on 

 Indian mulberry ; Italian, 3 to 6 grains, fed on white mulberry ; Not- 

 tingham, 2g- to 5 grains, fed on black mulberry ; New Jersey, U. S., 

 two crops a- year, 5 grains ; and New Jersey, Mammoth, 6 to 8 grains, 

 (the last two fed on Morus multicaulis,) were exhibited to the 

 Section. 



The chief object in view, in bestowing the time and labour neces- 

 sary to bring about the results which establish the interesting and 

 important fact, that silk of the best quality could thus be grown in 

 England, was to show how the produce of this article might be greatly 

 improved in quality, and indefinitely increased in quantity, in Hin- 

 doostan. There, labour is cheaper than anywhere besides ; and land 

 unoccupied and waste, but perfectly suitable for the mulberry, is plen- 

 tiful ; so that, by not confining the cultivation of silk to the marshy 

 Delta of the Ganges, as at present, but introducing into the more 

 elevated and even mountainous parts of Hindoostan, &c., the superior 

 kinds of silk worms and mulberry trees so long grown in the south of 

 Europe, and recently cultivated in the United States of North Ame- 

 rica, raw silk might be supplied from India at half its present cost — a 

 cost increased by the demand greatly exceeding the supply, so as to 

 have compelled us to pay four instead of three millions sterling a-year, 



