REPORT ON THE DISEASES OF SILKWORMS IN INDIA 65 



while they may not be understood, in all their details — what diseases 

 are ? — they do not present any very baffling problems to the seri- 

 culturist. On the other hand the diseases which we now have to 

 study are of rather an obscure origin and there is little real agree- 

 ment among investigators about them. Several diseases may be 

 grouped under the above heading but there seem to be only two 

 main types, Flacherie and Grasserie — all the other diseases are pro- 

 bably to be referred to one or other of these two well marked groups. 



(a) Kalshira {Flacherie), 



Definition and diagnosis. The external symptoms of 

 flacherie are well marked. They usually appear only when the 

 worms are full grown and are just about to spin. The worms 

 become sluggish and then motionless. The faeces are very soft — 

 almost liquid — and the anus is soiled by them. Vomiting may be 

 got, the vomit being usually a clear brownish liquid. The motion- 

 less bodies, which often hang head-downwards from a twig attach- 

 ed by their anal claspers, rapidly become very soft and discoloured 

 — the blackening usually beginning in the middle of the body in 

 front of the prolegs. Finally, the body becomes all black and 

 putrid and falls into a liquid condition. There is a peculiar sickly 

 odour associated with this disease. If a caterpillar showing the 

 preliminary symptoms of flacherie is dissected, the gut will pro- 

 bably show an amount- of undigested leaf in it and what is more 

 characteristic, "the peritrophic membrane will be found to be thick- 

 ened, soft and easily torn, and slightly opaque. The presence of 

 numerous bacteria — diplococci or bacilli — may frequently be demon- 

 strated but their presence does not seem to be by any manner of 

 means so constant in India as in Europe. 



History. Such are the typical symptoms of flacherie, and as 

 they are sufficiently striking the disease was recognized by the 

 earlier writers on sericulture and described by them. It is ques- 

 tionable if we know much more about this disease than, say, the 

 Abbe de Sauvages, who wrote in 1763, despite the fact that a con- 

 siderable amount of work has been done on it. Pasteur (1870) 

 demonstrated the presence of bacteria in cases of flacherie, and since 

 his day the French workers have been wedded to the theory that 

 flacherie is an infectious or at least a contagious disease. Other 

 workers have, since Pasteur's time, busied themselves over this 

 puzzling plague with varying success, and there is now a tendency 

 in some quarters, especially in Italy, to regard the disease, as not 

 contagious. The Japanese workers have been particularly ener- 

 getic in recent years in their researches into flacherie. In India, 

 ^according to Mukerji (1899), the disease has always been known. 



