TEA. AND SILK FAEMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 203 



a less figure than those already quoted, but as the conditions of 

 wages, mechanical adjuncts, and general experience would prove 

 wholly different in Europe to those we might expect to find, for 

 a few years at least, in a new country like New Zealand, the 

 search after examples need not be carried any further. It only 

 remains, therefore, to condense the information given, thus : — 



Cost of producing Silk. 



To the peasant proprietor in. Turkestan, about . . . 4/8| per lb. 

 To the Turkestan peasant, „ ... 5/0| „ 



To the Victorian Ladies' Sericicultural Company, about . 8/8 „ 



Divide by the examples given, 3 j 18/5^ 



Showing the average cost, accordiag to the above, to be . 6/l| per lb. 



Why Tea and Silk Farming should be conducted together. 



Bearing in view the cardinal points of previous sections, the 

 reader will now be prepared to learn our reasons for the belief 

 that tea farming and sericiculture, to be remunerative in New 

 Zealand, must be conducted together for probably the first ten 

 years after their inauguration there. 



It has been stated that there are seven separate hatchings of 

 silkworms per annum in the Canton district in China, and that 

 the season or liarvest is usually over in about six weeks. In 

 California, we understand, it is more prolonged ; in Australia in 

 favourable spots it may endure for even a greater period ; and in 

 parts of New Zealand, owing to a magnificent climate, absence 

 of frost, and freedom from dust storms, there is every reason to 

 expect the utmost extension in point of time of which serici- 

 culture is naturally capable. Some expansion of the harvest 

 may also be artificially effected by the judicious selection and 

 introduction of other silk-producing worms besides the mulberry- 

 feeding Bomhyx mori — such as the Attacus ricini, which eats the 

 leaves of the Ricimis communis, or castor-oil plant ; the Attacus 

 atlas, whose food is found on the Tcrmiiudia, and Zlzyphus jujuhco 

 (a worm which yields the celebrated, almost imperishable, grey 

 Tussah silk of China and India) ; the Anthcroea roylci, which 

 subsists upon the leaves of the Qucrcus incana, or conmion hill 

 oak ; the Bomhyx cynthia, whose naturid food is the Ailanthus 

 glandulosa ; the Anthercea yama-mai, another oak-leaf-feeding 

 species from Japan, whose eggs are so full of vitality that in 

 France they have been hatched at a temperature very little above 

 the freezing point, and others which might be named — but after 

 every known or theoretical variety or modification of serici- 

 culture shall have been attempted, the bulk of every year must 

 remain unimproved through the forced suspension of the industry 



