COCOONS OF PURE SILK. 
103 
And a curious circumstance has recently hap¬ 
pened that I must not omit to mention. 
A number of silkworms have been found under 
4 . 
a hedge in Kent, very contentedly feeding upon 
bramble leaves. They were in different stages 
of their existence. Some were eating with 
their usual voracity. Some were beginning to 
spin; some were roving restlessly about in search 
of a suitable place; while others had already 
enclosed themselves in their silken cocoons, and 
were hanging suspended from the weeds, but 
more particularly from the bramble bush. 
How they came there it is impossible to say ; 
but they have been pronounced to be exactly 
the same species as that cultivated abroad with 
so much care.* And if silkworms can thrive 
upon the leaf of the bramble, and other indige¬ 
nous plants, it is thought not impracticable to 
rear them in this country with but little labour 
or expense. 
It would be a very good thing for us ; and all 
the more desirable, because a disease, something 
like the plague, has lately broken out among the 
silkworms in France, and carried thousands of 
them off. The disease was supposed to arise 
from the worms being too much crowded together, 
and the only cure seemed to be to sprinkle the 
* Bombyx mori, the common silkworm. 
