Dec. 1, 1864.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



RESTORATION OF THE SILKWORM. 217 



generally a pure white silk, although, as already observed, in the colder 

 temperature of Mussooree the yellow cocoons are at least quite as nu- 

 merous as the white. This likewise is from China, and from its being 

 an annual is supposed, with good reason, to be a native of the northern 

 parts of that country. This species I have named Bombyx textor, as it 

 is totally distinct from the Cashmere worm. 



Three other species domesticated in Bengal are respectively termed 

 the Madrassee or Nistry, — the Dasee, — and the small Chinese monthly 

 worm ; these three are termed monthly worms because they yield from 

 six to eight crops during the year. These I have respectively named 

 Bombyx Crcesi, B.fortanatus, and B. sinensis, while from the fact of their 

 yielding several crops a year I am inclined to regard them as belonging 

 to the warmer and more southern parts of China, the number of broods 

 indicating a climate in which food is abundant throughout the year, 

 while the annuals on the contrary, as every naturalist is aware, indicate 

 a far more temperate climate. 



Besides these, there is said to be another species cultivated in Arracan 

 which yields a silk superior to that of the Bengal worms, but as I have 

 been hitherto unable to procure it for examination, I can do no more 

 than indicate its existence and name it provisionally as Bombyx Arraca- 

 nensis. 



Seeing, then, that this diversity exists among the worms, it is but 

 reasonable to infer that in their native countries and in a state of nature, 

 they did not all feed upon the same species of mulberry leaf, but that 

 the annuals, like the wild Bombyx Huttoni of the Western Himalaya, 

 were originally restricted to the trees indigenous to the cold mountainous 

 regions of the north of China, while the monthly worms were in like 

 manner confined to species adapted to the greater heats of the southern 

 lowland provinces. 



The inquiry, then, as to which is the tree best adapted, in India or 

 elsewhere, for the production of good silk, although apparently a very 

 simple one, is in reality not easily answered, since much must depend 

 upon the species of worm under cultivation, as well as upon the climate 

 itself, and the difficulty is enhanced by the fact that every one who, 

 possessed of much zeal but little knowledge of the subject, essays to 

 rear silkworms, appears to think it necessary to extol some particular 

 species of mulberry, and to pronounce it, for the time, the very ne plus 

 ulfra of silkworm diet. 



One while it is the white-fruited mulberry only that can enable the 

 insect to elaborate good silk, and anon, for some inexplicable whim, the 

 white is discarded and another tree adopted in its stead. The purple- 

 fruited species are unhesitatingly denounced, and to be " condemned 

 without benefit of clergy." * And yet the white mulberry is found to 

 be nothing more than an Albino variety of the purple-fruited tree. 



* Proc. Hort. Soc. of India, 10th August, 1859, vol. xi. part 1, p. 64. 

 VOL. V. C C 



