2 REPORT OK THE DISEASES OP SILKWORMS IN INDIA 



2 ' ' improper management of the worms" ; 3 " the present mode of 

 conducting the Company's silk investments." Again in 1819 the 

 Resident of Jungypore complained that the cultivation of the 

 " Bara Palu " worm had become " extremely p ecarious and 

 uncertain." It is highly probable that such facts as I have men- 

 tioned point to a considerable amount of disease in Bengal. 

 r £??j The Company attempted to deal with the question of degeneracy 

 chiefly by calling for reports from its servants — a method not 

 unknown to this day — but also, as we have noted, by introducing 

 foreign stock and fresh varieties of mulberry, although, as Geoghegan 

 remarks, these efforts " were not so vigorous." It is interesting to 

 note that the " carelessness and improper management of the 

 natives " as well as their tendency to starve the worms are cited 

 as being among the chief causes of " degeneration." 



After 1834 the Company ceased to take an active part in the 

 production of silk, which was left in the hands of private indivi- 

 duals, so that the Company's records no longer continue to be of 

 any value to us. A considerable amount of work on the improve- 

 ment of sericulture was done by various people, sometimes amateurs, 

 sometimes professional sericulturalists ; at times encouraged by 

 Government, at other times ignored. And from the reports and 

 papers of these workers one gathers that there was a considerable 

 amount of disease to be found, when the work of rearing worms 

 was personally superintended by an observant and intelligent person 

 of education. 



A certain Mr. Bashford, a filature manager, experimenting 

 about the years 1854-56 on the hybridizing of silkworms had very 

 varying success with his worms. At times " many thousands of 

 the worms died," or again they had " very fair success with their 

 worms, which escaped the disease then prevalent among native 

 worms." But finally disaster seems to have overtaken his rearings — 

 " the crop this time was a great failure, the worms deteriorated — 

 and cocoons were light, flimsy and a perfect disappointment." Mr. 

 Bashford concluded from his experiments that " more careful culti- 

 vation of the mulberry ; a fuller supply of leaf to the worms ; more 

 attention to selection in breeding, to ventilation and equable 

 temperature " might be expected to improve the silkworm. 



About this time a great deal of work was done by Captain 

 Hutton, and in a series, of papers from 1859 onwards he records his 

 observations. There is no doubt about the disease in silkworms in 

 these publications. Although the author was evidently not in a 

 position to diagnose the maladies accurately — who • was prior to 

 Pasteur's work of 1.865-1870? — it is obvious that pebrine and 

 grasserie at least were serious plagues. The suggested remedies are 



