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thinks most likely to furnish employment to the bulk of the people; and the progrefs he has made in the silk rearing in so fhort a time, is truly astonishing. Our limits prevent the insertion of letters that tend to establish this fact. I cannot, however, deny myself the pleasure of inserting the following letter on the subject of silk rearing in India :

To the hon. Sir Charles Qakely bart.senior member, and council.
HON. SIRS,
April 18. 1790.

A NECESSARY attention to the duties of my station in the military department, has hitherto prevented any acknowledgement of your favour, enclosing the extract of a general letter from the honourable Court of Directors, dated the 19th of May, 1790; and although a state of war is ever precarious, yet the superior discipline of our troops, and the skill of the commanders in maintaining war in the enemy's country, will, I trust, excuse my writing occasionally on the arts of peace that may be promoted in this.

I am pleased with the approval of the honourable court, because they will see from my report of Sept. 14. 1789, the readiness in which their nopalry stands to receive the best kind of cochineal insects from America, where alone they can be found. I therefore hope that no time will be lost in sending them here.

Some mulberry trees I introduced about twenty years ago grew so luxuriantly, that I was at pains to obtain the eggs of the silk-woim from Bengal at several different times. The first embarkation could not be hatched, the second hatched on the passage, but the third, which came, in one of the store-fhips in December last, has succeeded; and not one of the worms have died of disease in this cli-, mate, or till such time as all their evolutions were accomplished.

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When I tell you that the lady governess has directed a plantation of mulberry trees at the Female Asylum, and that several of my friends are now employed in the carc of silk-worms on different parts of the coast, you will, I am sure, think with me, that so favourable an opportunity of establishing a manufacture of public utility, fhould be exposed to as little rifk as pofsible; especially when I likewise afsure you that I have constructed the Piemontese reel agreeable to the plan in the French Encyclopedia, which has cost the company many thousand pounds for defraying the expence of Italian artists sent to Bengal.

The most authentic accounts I. have been able to procure, state the contracts for silk at Cofsimbuzar, to amount yearly to sixty lacks of rupees, which is not half the value of 22,000 bales, the former produce of that country; indeed I have understood that Tippoo Sultan has lately supplied the interior parts of the peninsula with silk made at Seringapatnam, yet the demand is ever considerable.

As my views have been uniformly directed to point out the means of earning a subsistence at all times to the meaner and lower clafses of the people, of a nature adapted to their genius and disposition, it will only be necessary to represent to you the mode in which this may be effected.

I therefore recommend that the revenue board be instructed to direct mulberry plantations at every village on the coast, which, if I am not much mistaken, may be done at little or no expence, by means of the collectors and Natowárs, or natives, who direct the cultivation..

The ground for mulberry plantations fhould be a light friable soil, capable of being watered in the hot season; and at the same time so high as not to be flooded in the wet; such are the banks of all the rivulets on the coast. As the insects can speedily be multiplied, and distributed whenever mulberry plantations are sufficiently established,.

I have caused as many to be planted in my own garden, and at the nopalry, as will supply abundance of cuttings for the gardens of all the collectors, from whence they may be afterwards distributed amongst the villagers.

The island of Cofsimbuzar and its neighbourhood, where alone silk is made in Bengal, is but a small spot, compared with the extent of the coast. In four months of cold season neither does the mulberry put forth leaves, nor the eggs of the silk-worm hatch, whereas the cold season here. is sufficiently warm for both, and the silk I have made is more brilliant than that of Bengal.

In Europe the worm undergoes but one evolution in the year, whereas mine are in the third generation since the 14th of December last.

Several gentlemen have brought silk-worms here since I have been in India, which for want of plan, attention, or perseverance, have come to nothing; and although the war at present is a great hinderance to the full adoption of any plan for this purpose, yet from the ease with which it be effected, and that mulberry cuttings, planted before the monsoon, will live with little farther trouble, I am induced to hope that ground will be laid out for plantations as soon as pofsible. I am, &c.

may

JAMES ANDERSON.

Extract of a letter from the same to the same.
May 9. 1790.

As the introduction of silk here must be attended with increase of all the present branches of revenue, by the consumption of necefsaries depending on a richer population, and nothing promises so fair to repair the waste of different Mysorean wars, I think it altogether worthy your attention to hold up an exemption from taxes on mulberry plantations, or silk reared by the natives.

I am, &c.

May 9. Since the above letters were written, it appears that he had been very rightly informed with regard to the silk manufacture introduced by Tippoo Sultan into his dominions, which before the irruption of our troops into that country, afforded employment to many of his people. Since the conquest of Bangalore some of these people who are acquainted with the rearing of silk-worms, have been induced to become instructors to those in the British settlements; and it is probable that in a very few years, abundance of silk may be obtained from the peninsula of India.

Dr James Anderson the beneficent promoter of these useful enterprises, was the son of Mr Andrew Anderson, a man of great worth, and much esteemed by all who knew him, who practised medicine at a village six miles from Edinburgh called Long Hermiston. The rudiments of his education were obtained at a country school in that neighbourhood; and they were completed at Edinburgh, under the tuition of Dr Cullen, and other eminent professors of that university. His circumstances in early youth were by no means affluent; but his progrefs in every branch of science that he studied was remarkable. He was of course particularly noticed by all his teachers. He left the university while still very young. He went out as a surgeon to an East India ship in the spring of the year 1759. He went out once more in the year 1761. Soon after his going out this second time, he was appointed physician general to the presidency of Madras, where he has resided

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constantly since that time. His mother, a woman above ninety years of age, of a hale constitution, enjoys from him a comfortable substistence in her -old age. He seems indeed to value money in no other respect than as it enables him to be kind to those who have occasion for his afsistance. The writer of this article, who was his companion in youth, his school fellow in studies, and his correspondent ever since, abstains from any eulogium, which could not be well received. To those who know him not, the bare truth would appear a violent exaggeration; to those who do know him, that which would be barely tolerated by others would appear so far fhort of truth as to give them great offence. It be with justice said, that the natives of India never met with an European who knew their situation so well, or who so cordially applied himself to promote their real interests. It is not impofsible, that, in future times, the recollection of this man may tend to preserve from total execration the European name in India.

may

ON THE POLITICAL PROGRESS OF BRITAIN, -LETTER VI.

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SIR, To the Editor of the Bee. To the war with Spain in 1739, there was added. another against France, which was declared on the 31st of March 1744. I am now to give a fhort view of the causes and termination of this contest; and I begin by reciting a few miscellaneous transac tions, from the accefsion of the house of Brunswick to that period.

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