Monthly MicroscopicaH 
Journal, May 1, ISti'J. J 
Silhivorm Cultivation. 
305 
races, give very mediocre results. In fact, tlie corpuscles which 1 
have often insisted on, are the appreciable characters of the disease ; 
but the eggs may be attacked by the original disease w^ithout 
having these microscopical features. In examining the eggs of a 
corpuscular female, in which they were disposed in chaplets in the 
ovaries, all the eggs were not found charged with corpuscles. 
In order, then, to make a definitive experiment to guarantee the 
healthiness of the eggs, there is nothing like examining the moths 
before or after they have deposited their ova, in order that w^e may 
reject all those eggs proceeding from tainted parents. This mode, 
the most rational, although the most difficult of execution, which 
M. Pasteur has suggested, and which I believe to he alone capable 
of regenerating our races of worms, was attempted last year at 
Milan with complete success. The results I published in my letter 
to the ' Perseveranza ;' but I ask permission now to describe in detail 
some of the results which the experiments of 1868 in Lombardy 
enabled me to formulate. 
In the month of June, 1868, I received from Zara a chambree 
of cocoons of the ancient Italian race, cultivated on the Dalmatian 
coast, not far from the shores of the Adriatic. These cocoons, 
about one kilogramme, contained three chrysalides alive. Some of 
these chrysalides, which I soon examined, and which were not yet 
perfect, exhibited no trace of the corpuscles. It was then that the 
idea occurred to me of applying M. Pasteur's method to the eggs 
obtained from healthy moths grown with every care . . 
My friends the Marquis Crivelli and M. Bellotti undertook 
this experiment. The moths, when hatched out, had a most de- 
ceptive appearance, and, when examined by these gentlemen, were 
found to be free from corpuscles ; here there was a perfectly healthy 
fcCgg, the product of healthy parents, which gave promise, not only 
of a large produce in cocoons, but even of a healthy crop of moths 
and of eggs for the culture of the year 1869. 
M. Crivelli selected Inverigo, in Brianza, to " bring up " these 
eggs, in order to surround them with all the necessary care. He 
divided the eggs into three portions ; one of these parcels was given 
to a peasant in the village, another w^as reared in his own garden, 
and the third was sent to a distant locality. 
It is necessary to state that the mode of " education " adopted by 
the Marquis was an extremely careful one ; general hygienic con- 
ditions being carefully attended to, and the locality, which had some 
time ago been used as a hospital for cholera patients, having been 
fumigated with chloride of lime. Within a radius of 500 metres, no 
other silkworms were cultivated. Moreover, the locality abounded 
in mulberry-trees — this fact being of importance, — for had the 
leaves been imported from other locahties, they might have been 
tainted with corpuscles of diseased caterpillars. 
