Science: Lady's Worms

In England there is only one producer of raw silk on a practical scale, and she is Lady Millicent Zoe Hart Dyke, nee Bond, wife of Engineer Sir Oliver Hamilton Augustus Hart Dyke, Bart. At present her small industry is enjoying brisk business, for the new Queen and the Duchesses of Gloucester and Kent have patriotically-commanded that their coronation gowns be made of British silk.

The Dyke silk is grown at Lullingstone Castle, Kent, rushed to Macclesfield (neckties) to be "thrown" (twisted for proper thread thickness), then to Braintree to be boiled and dyed the correct shade of imperial purple. The fabric is woven on medieval looms by an enthusiastic, slim-fingered girl named Lily Lee, at the rate of three yards per week. By last week Lily Lee had woven 42 yards, one yard more than enough for the three royal robes.

Sir Oliver Hart Dyke's father was Sir William Hart Dyke, Disraeli's Parliament whip, friend of Charles Dickens, lawn tennis pioneer. Month after he died, aged 93, in 1931, his wife followed him to the grave. Inheritance taxes of $500,000 forced Son Oliver to stop living at Lulling-stone Castle, family seat of the Hart Dykes for almost 300 years. Enterprising Lady Hart Dyke promptly started a silkworm factory in Lullingstone Castle. "I've been very keen on silkworms since I was seven years old," she explained last week, "and later I began to study them experimentally. If I get sufficient support from manufacturers, we hope to have a flourishing industry."

Lady Hart Dyke has 21 acres of mulberry bushes, tended by partly disabled War veterans. Her worms eat 300 lb. of leaves daily, are kept in trays in the biggest rooms of the castle. The girls who gather the cocoons and reel off the silk fibres are sent abroad for training. Britain's only commercial raw silk producer has four reeling machines which turn out some 20 lb. of raw silk per week.

Some weeks ago after a batch of crossbred worms from France had begun to spin, the cocoons appeared in three different colors—white, golden yellow, near-beige. It was obvious to Lady Hart Dyke that mismating had occurred. With British doggedness she set out to trace the ancestry of the worms, to determine whether the production of the three colors could be continued and controlled along established genetic lines.