TEA AND SILK FAEMIXG IX XEW ZEALAND. 189 



Sericiculture, 



Having thus endeavoured to show the suitability of the Auck- 

 land climate for the prosecution of chasericulture, the position 

 assumed cannot be weakened, but may be materially fortified, if 

 any moderately recent example of a successful essay at tea or 

 silk production in New Zealand can be quoted. As yet, unfor- 

 tunately, tea cultivation, we believe, has not been tried beyond 

 the precincts of the Government Botanic Gardens or in private 

 policies ; but as mulberry bushes are numerous in various 

 parts of the islands, are readily propagated from cuttings, and 

 as the eastern aphorism already cited that " wherever the mul- 

 berry grows in profusion there Nature indicates a suitable spot for 

 tea" is not undeserving attention, any illustration given of success 

 in sericiculture there may reasonably be held to apply to tea pro- 

 duction also. Before offering an example of this kind, however, 

 it will be desirable in a few paragraphs to trace some of the 

 circumstances which originally led those interested in silk to 

 extend their hopes to new countries, instead of continuing to centre 

 them as formerly upon the European districts, which had par- 

 tially supplied their markets with this beautiful and valuable 

 material for nearly a thousand years, or upon the Far East, 

 where it had been an article of commerce from the remotest 

 antiquity. 



By whom and where silkworms were first reared for their 

 produce is unknown, although sericiculture has been traced 

 through native writers as having been practised in China 2700 

 years prior to the Christian era ; and it is fairly well established 

 that not until thirty-three centuries afterwards was the silk- 

 worm introduced into Europe. During the period of six hundred 

 years which followed, sericiculture was almost wholly limited 

 to the JEgean Islands, Corinth, Athens, and Thebes, when the 

 Venetians appropriated the industry, and grew very rich on its 

 gains. In 1130 Eoger II., King of Sicily, envied the lucrative 

 traffic, and immediately proceeded to kidnap numbers of the silk 

 weavers of Palestine whom he transferred to his own territory. 

 Having established his victims in Palermo and over Calabria, 

 the present vast silk trade of Italy was founded. To the Moors 

 Spain owes her success in sericiculture, as, on the capture of 

 Grenada by Ferdinand in the fifteenth century, the industry was 

 found in a flourishing state there, and in Cordova and ^furcia. 

 In France, although the habits of the silkworm had been studied 

 by some of the nobles at Dauphiny in the year 1480, it was not 

 until 1521 that Henri Quatre gave a decicled impetus to serici- 

 culture, by encouraging the visits and settlement of Milanese 

 artisans at Nismes, where they taught the French the manage- 



