Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A fungus, Botrytis Bassiana, the cause of a very destructive disease in silkworms.
  • noun The disease produced in silkworms by the muscardine.
  • noun The dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A disease which is very destructive to silkworms, and which sometimes extends to other insects. It is attended by the development of a fungus (provisionally called Botrytis bassiana). Also, the fungus itself.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a fungus, Beauveria bassiana, that affects silkworms, their bodies becoming white and covered with spores

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Another fungus, the so-called "green muscardine" (_Isaria destructor_), has been found so deadly to insects that Prof. Metschnikoff, who is experimenting upon it, hopes to extirpate the _Phylloxera_, the Colorado beetle, etc., by its agency.

    Scientific American Supplement, No. 303, October 22, 1881 Various

  • Weismann suggests that the morbid condition of the nervous system may be due to some infection such as might arise from microbes, which find a home in the mutilated and disordered nervous system in the parent, and subsequently transmit themselves to the offspring through the reproductive elements, as the infections of various diseases appear to do -- the muscardine silkworm disease in particular being known to be conveyed to offspring in this manner.

    Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin

  • The silkworm had been previously attacked by muscardine, a disease proved by Bassi to be caused by a vegetable parasite.

    Fragments of science, V. 1-2 John Tyndall 1856

  • Biological method, involves the use of natural predators such as earwig, green muscardine fungus, and white muscardine fungus to paralyze and eventually kill the pest.

    The Hindu - Front Page 2010

  • Such a transference of microbes is believed to occur in syphilis and tuberculosis, and has been ascertained to occur in the case of the muscardine silkworm disease. [

    Darwinism (1889) Alfred Russel Wallace 1868

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