CULTUBB OF 8ILKWOBMB. 
7 
mulberritxi in CMna, but perhaps the cUmatt' here may be 
particularly suited to the developmeiit of tho fuugue, while in 
Chiua it is not, and the disease there may be sporadic, and do 
little or no damai^'r. Mulberries were introduced into Perak 
from India at least eleven years ago, and I have examined a 
uiiiuber of tbeee trtx^B and hixw not seen a single spot of disease 
on any of them, Tlus shows that the disease is not indigenous 
to Perak, Init that it was brought alonj* with the cuttln^js from 
China^ and 1 raised the question whether the two email planta- 
tionii^ which had been started at Aywr Kuniug, and which were 
both badly affected by the disease, she mid not l>e destroyed 
Iwfcirc it spread fnrther^ or at least n>easiires taken to disinfect 
them. 
Another question whieh suggested itself was, whether the 
mulberries whieh were introduced from India, and which are 
apparently both of tlifferent varieties to that recently introduced 
from China^ are siisccptible in the same de^i-ee to the ravages of 
the disease. To test this I gave young plants of both kinds of 
these Inrlian mulberries to the Ciiinese, aiid afterwards also to 
Mr, Li^ht, requesting that they might l>e planted amongst the 
affected bushes- Some two monthK afterwarde I examined these 
plants and found that they bad contracted the disease eqimlly 
with the Chinese mulljcn-ies amongst which they were planted, 
thus proving that they were not proof against the disease and 
that had the disease Ixvn indigenous to the country they would 
have caught it during the eleven years they have l>eeii here. 
mSECTS DESTEUCTIVE TO THE MULBEEET, 
So fax, I have only noticed one insect which does any con- 
siderable amount of damage to the mulherry bushes. This is 
the common yellow and green diamond beetle. It damages them 
when in the imago state, by eating the leaves- At certain times 
of the year they are very abundant and do serious injury to 
orange, lime, lemon and pomeloe treee, 
EAMI AS A FOOD PLANT. 
A paragraph having gone the rounds of the newspapers to 
the effect that it had Ijeen found that rami (China grass-cloth 
plant) had been successfully used as a food for silkworms, and 
that they not only throve on it but that the yield of silk was 
largely increased, I tried the experiment, and found that not 
only the worms that had been fed on mulberry, but also the 
newly hatched ones, which had not previously been fed at all, 
absolutely refused to eat it, preferring death by starvation. I 
tried cut and also crushed leaves with the same result. There 
would therefore appear to be no doubt that rami cannot be used 
2 
