THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



AILANTICULTURE— ITS HISTORY AND COMMERCIAL 

 RELATIONS. 



BY JAMES MORRIS. 



In the May number of the Technologist there was published a con- 

 densed report of the translation made by Lady Dorothy Nevill of the 

 work of M. Guerin-Meneville, Secretary to the Council of the Imperial 

 Society of Acclimatisation, Paris, on the 'Ailanthus Silk Worm.' As this 

 culture is now beginning to form an important branch of industry in 

 France, and as it could, under many aspects, be made to fill up the fearful 

 void in cotton production, the source at present of so much want and 

 misery in the north of England ; and as the Ailanthus tree could be 

 planted advantageously on the barren lands of the United Kingdom, where 

 hardly anything else could be profitably cultivated, it seems worth while 

 to occupy a short space in the Technologist in stating what M. Guerin- 

 Meneville, so well known for his other scientific works, has already done 

 in Ailanticulture, and what are its prospects of useful introduction into 

 England. 



It was in 1845 that M. Guerin-Meneville, in an article in the ' Annales 

 de la Societe SMcecole de France ' (IX., p. 269), proposed to introduce and 

 to acclimatise the silkworms of the Castor-oil plant (Ricinus) and the oak. 

 At his request, one of his pupils of the experimental silkworm breeding 

 establishment of St. Tulle, near Calcutta, was preparing to forward him the 

 Ricinus silkworm, when the Society received some from another source, 

 and which it has been able successfully to acclimatise. (' Bullet Soc. 

 d'Acclimat.,' Sept., 1854, p. 307, et < Rev. Zool.,' 1854, p. 573 et 636.) Since 

 that time, M. Guerin-Meneville has largely distributed this species in the 

 name of the Society. 



At present, M. Guerin-Meneville distinguishes three species of the oak 

 silkworm : 



1. That from the North of China, which he has named Bombyx Pernyi ; 

 2. That from Bengal, which produces the Tussah silk, B. Mylitta; 3. That 

 from Japan, which he has named Bombyx Anther cea (Yama-Mai). M. 



a G 



