NOTE ON THE SILKWORM. O 



is exceedingly viscous, and, probably, quite as useful as gum arabic. 

 The gum of the black wattle (Acacia mollissima, Willd.), which is often 

 mixed with the other, is very inferior to it, being far less viscous. 



Sundry Products. — Prickly Fern Tree (Alsophila Australis, Br.) — 

 This very handsome fern tree occasionally attains a height of 30 feet. 

 It is not, by any means, so common a fern tree as Dicksonia antartica 

 (Lab.) 



Pith op Rushes. — This is the pith of the largest Tasmahian rush 

 (Juncus vaginatus, Br.) It is not rare. The pith is made up, in Hobart 

 Town, into head-dresses, of which specimens are shown. 



Gelatinous Seaweed (Gracilaria sp.) — This alga, which may, per- 

 haps, be regarded as a variety of G. confervoides (Grev.), is occasionally 

 used for making jelly. It abounds on the shores of Sloping (or Slopen) 

 Islands, in Frederick Hendrick Bay. 



Native Bread (Mylitta Australis, Berk.) — An insipid, under-ground 

 fungus, which sends up no stem, and is generally met with by accident 

 When growing rapidly it sometimes causes the ground to crack, and may 

 thus be discovered by a careful observer, as it probably was by the 

 Aborigines, who used it as food. 



NOTE ON THE SILKWORM. 



BY JAMES MORRIS. 



I beg to append the following few lines, in the shape of a note, to 

 the short article on the silkworm which appeared in the Technologist 

 of last month. At a late meeting of the Academic des Sciences, M. 

 Brouzet communicated the very beneficial results which he had obtained 

 in arresting the contagious maladies of the silkworm, by the employ- 

 ment in his silkworm sheds of pine-wood injected with sulphate of 

 copper. M. Brouzet was a large proprietor in the Cevennes, and he had 

 the misfortune to see his crop of silkworms perish successively from the 

 year 1853 to 1858. He then determined to renew the whole of the wood- 

 work of his silkworm houses, and for this purpose he employed pine 

 wood recently cut. This produced a satisfactory result, though it was 

 sufficiently clear that many of those diseases to which the silkworm is so 

 liable were again in operation. It appears that in 1860 M. Brouzet was 

 charged by the Government to furnish a certain quantity of poles for the 

 telegraphic wires over which it had control. M. Brouzet injected these 

 poles, according to the process adopted by Dr. Boucherie. The thought 

 occurred to him that a similar process might be advantageously adopted 

 in the wood work of his silkworm houses. He accordingly employed 

 the sulphate of copper, and the health of the silkworms not only visibly 



