TEA AND SILK FARMING IN NEW ZEALAND. 193 



per acre, or a dividend of nearly 68 per cent, upon the outlay, is 

 surely a result which, after making every reasonable deduction 

 and allowance, no other among our ordinary agricultural products 

 can show. It may well be taken into account, also, that the 

 example given refers to a new mulberry plantation, which in the 

 course of other five years w^ould have doubled its yield, and 

 correspondingly increased even the large return quoted. 



Whilst the advocates for sericiculture in Australia, and else- 

 where, w^ere thus busily engaged, the subject had found ex- 

 ponents in Is'ew Zealand also, particularly in the person of Mr. 

 T. C. Batchelor of jSTelson, who, in 1870, endeavoured to arouse 

 the Government and wake up the colonists to see the magnifi- 

 cent commercial prospect opening up before their eyes. The 

 efforts of this gentleman culminated in the presentation of a 

 series of printed papers on sericiculture to both houses of the 

 Colonial Assembly the same year ; but, unfortunately, the pro- 

 posal thereafter gradually slid into oblivion. At a later date, 

 however, it was again revived, partly through the display at the 

 Sydney exhibition of 1879, of some beautiful specimens of cocoons 

 and raw silk, reared in Auckland and Canterbury, and partly, 

 no doubt, by reason of the untiring advocacy of the industry on 

 the part of a few believers in this capability of the colony. For 

 seven years prior to 1870 Mr. Batchelor had been cultivating the 

 Tuscan mulberry, and producing silk to a limited extent ; and 

 in one of the printed papers referred to, he stated, for the infor- 

 mation of the Government, that four year's experience had con- 

 vinced him that an annual yield of value to the extent of £100 

 per acre would fall greatly short of the result he expected a few 

 years later, when his trees had grown older. However, beyond 

 calling attention to the suitability of part of Xew^ Zealand for 

 sericiculture ; eliciting some interesting information through 

 official sources, and obtaining an offer of a Government bonus 

 for the encouragement of the industry, no further issue of Mr. 

 Batchelor's strenuous advocacy at that time appeared. But his 

 agitation was not fruitless, as the subject of sericiculture was 

 one of those taken up by the Colonial Industries Commission, 

 which began taking evidence afterward, and finishing their 

 labours in 1880. Symptoms of local interest in the matter had 

 likewise appeared in the greater frequency with which recent 

 travellers reported having noted patches of mulberry cultivation 

 in widely separated districts, and that some of the colonists, as 

 well as a few of the Maoris, were turning their attention to, and 

 doing a little in, silk production. In the Commissioner's Iveport 

 just referred to, at page 39 of the Appendix, notice is taken of 

 a letter forwarded by the writer of tiiis essay to a gentleman in 

 Auckland, on the subject of sericiculture there, as follows : — 

 " Mr. Bicliard Dignan to ]Mr. Commissioner A. J. Burns, Auck- 



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