230 TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 



for the purpose of conducting the farming and production of tea 

 and silk, and any other articles of commerce which may be 

 found suitable to the climate. And (4), keeping in view the cir- 

 cumstance that the successful establishment of such a group of 

 industries in any district would probably raise the value of all 

 adjacent lands, that, in order to obtain a share of the antici- 

 pated advance, the functions of a Land Settlement Association 

 be assumed, by the further acquisition of a surrounding area of 

 perhaps 30,000 acres, to be secured, if possible, on similar terms 

 to those granted to the corporation in the district of Eangitikei, 

 known as the Manchester settlement (page 215, OflScial Hand- 

 book, 1875). 



The initial operation would consist in arranging for the food 

 requirements of the settlement, supposing it to be planted be- 

 yond easy reach of an already cultivated area, by the tillage of 

 250 acres or so as a permanent cereal and root farm for the 

 comfortable maintenance of the employes and draught animals 

 on the estate. Contemporaneously with the establishment of 

 the farm, tea and mulberry planting, at the rate of one or more 

 hundred acres of each per annum, might be prosecuted, a con- 

 siderable portion of suitable land thrown into wheat, let tempo- 

 rarily for grazing and other agricultural and stock-raising pur- 

 poses, and some of it devoted to the objects presently to be 

 described, whilst a proportionate area of forest would necessarily 

 be retained for the supply of timber, firewood, and charcoal. 

 Meanwhile the erection of the buildings required, — houses, cot- 

 tages, and other tenements for the employes ; stables, barns, 

 granary, and outhouses connected with the farm ; and sawmills, 

 workshops, tea-houses, laboratory, magnaneries, and stores essen- 

 tial for chasericulture, — would be undertaken, and the whole 

 work so timed that the arrival of special apparatus from home, 

 would be as nearly as possible coincident with the completion of 

 the premises for its reception, and with the dawn of the period 

 for its employment. 



It would answer no useful purpose at present were we to 

 enter minutely upon the various items of expenditure necessary 

 ere the company's special estate of about three thousand acres, 

 partly under tea and mulberries began to yield an income (begin- 

 ning in the second and continuing through subsequent years) 

 from silk, and commencing during the fourth and fifth years 

 from tea. These items, however, have been carefully calculated 

 in conforraity with the experience of the cost of production in 

 China, India, and Australia, as already given in previous pages 

 of this essay, and in unison, as far as can be ascertained, with 

 colonial rates. Yet, whilst particulars are withheld as liable, at 

 this early stage of the enterprise, to prove misleading, and as 

 requiring too much space, it may not be undesirable to lay 



