KAW-SILK. 



xxiii 



and the Government apprized the Court,* that Report. 

 " the cause to which they attributed this favour- 

 able circumstance, was not only a peculiarly 

 flourishing silk harvest in March 1792, but gene- 

 rally the extension of the cultivation of the mul- 

 berry, which had flourished so well, in consequence 

 of the increase of the Company's investment of 

 filature silk, and the regularly returning advances 

 of money which it occasioned to the husbandman, 

 that the Custom-house accounts exhibited a con- 

 siderable export of silk into different parts of 

 Hindostan, by land as well as by sea, both to 

 Madras and Bombay." 



The imports of raw-silk from Bengal, from 1792 

 to 1835, are exhibited in the Appendix A. 



It has been shewn, that the introduction of the 

 Italian method of winding silk in Bengal may be 

 dated from about the year 1770, but it was not 

 until 1775 that the new mode could be considered 

 as in full operation. In the intermediate period 

 much time was unavoidably taken up in erecting 

 buildings, fitting up furnaces, reels, &c. ; and in 

 instructing the natives, whose long established 

 prejudices it was difficult to remove, so scrupulously 



averse 



* 27th April 1792. 



