22 Remarks on the Silks of Assam. [Jan. 



it alway washes her hands and feet. With the Assamese the idea 

 prevails as in other parts, that the eye of the stranger is hurtful — 

 their account of this is, that the worms, fancying the stranger is criti- 

 cising them, get sulky, abstain from food and die. 



The large and small mulberry worms are reared in Assam. I will 

 describe the rearing of those which produce only one bund a year, 

 (the larger,) they being more in use than the others in this district. 

 It will be sufficient to shew how far the process assimilates to that 

 followed in Bengal and other parts. The moths are made to deposit 

 their eggs on pieces of cloth — these are packed up with the house- 

 hold clothing ; when the time of hatching approaches (December), 

 they are taken out and exposed to the air ; when the worms are 

 hatched they are fed the first three or four days on the tender leaves 

 Cut up, in new earthen pots ; then on a bamboo tray. After the first 

 moulting they are removed to the mutchang (machdn) or stages. When 

 thev are about beginning to spin, they are put on bamboo trays fitted 

 up with pieces of matting fixed perpendicularly at intervals of two 

 inches : these in the first afternoon are exposed for half an hour to 

 the side where the sun is shining, and afterwards hung up in the 

 house. After leaving as many as are required for breeding, those that 

 are to be wound off, after having been exposed to the sun for three 

 or four days, are put over a slow fire in an earthen vase full of 

 water. One person winds off the silk with an instrument made of 

 three pieces of stick joined together thus, the perpendicular one is 

 held at one end with the right hand, and the left directs 

 _ the thread over the cross bars — taking care in doing this 

 to make it rub against the fore-arm to twist it — whilst an- 

 — other person attends to the fire and the putting on new 

 cocoons. When a sufficient quantity for a skein has thus 

 accumulated it is taken off the cross bars. 



There are hardly any plantations of mulberry in Assam, on such 

 a scale as to be worth mentioning ; a few men of rank have small 

 patches of it, sufficient to produce silk for their own use ; — the few 

 ryuts that sell the silk generally have not more than a seer to dis- 

 pose of in the year, — the produce of a few plants round their huts 

 or in the hedges of their fields. The leaves are not sold as in Bengal, 

 and when a ryut's own supply fails, he obtains it from neighbors 

 who have a few trees merely for the fruit. The worms are reared 

 by joogees alone, people of an inferior caste : — those of the highest 

 can cultivate the plant and do all the out-of-door work — but none 

 but a joogee can, without degradation, attend to the worms or touch 

 the silk whilst reeling. As the same prejudice does not exist in Ben- 



