TEA AXD SILK FAEillXG IN NEW ZEALAND. 235 



expedient, are daily, indeed hourly, iDtroduced to an ever- 

 diversified panorama of vegetable brilliance and inexhaustible 

 stores of sweetness ; their vigour is economised, as their flights 

 are essentially limited although frequent ; the shining hour is 

 improved to the utmost, the storage of honey being continual, 

 and its pillage by the watchful attendants correspondingly main- 

 tained ; whilst the grand result of the season's operations is the 

 usual harvest of two hundredweight of honey per hive. 



On a small scale, a similar scene may be witnessed each 

 autumn on the Clyde, w^th the difference that in this case the 

 steamer's duties are limited to the conveyance of hives and 

 swarms to and from the moorland districts adjoining the Frith, 

 where the bees enjoy the blooming heather for a time. 



It is no doubt well known, yet the circumstance will bear 

 repetition, that the bee, particularly the Italian insect, is one of 

 the farmer's best friends. Apart from its great size, robustness, 

 prolific character, untiring industry, its greater production of 

 honey, and its being able to revel in luxury where the ordinary 

 small bee to which we are accustomed starves ; its superior 

 length of proboscis enables it to reach the nectaries of red clover 

 and some plants besides, where other bees fail, so that fertilisa- 

 tion ensues whenever Italian bees have been roaming over red 

 clover fields. This important function the Ligurian bee performs 

 will not seem less valuable when it is mentioned that in ordinary 

 seasons in New Zealand a red clover crop is reckoned as profit- 

 able to the farmer as one of wheat. Sufficient, probably, has 

 now been said in advocacy of apiculture as one of the minor 

 industries proposed to be taken under the wing of the Xew 

 Zealand Chasericultural Company ; and those who were 

 privileged to witness the fearless and expert artificial swarming 

 of bees and handling of Italian queens by young ladies in the 

 tents of the Caledonian Apiarian and Entomological Society at 

 the last meeting of the Highland and Agricultural Society at Stir- 

 ling, will not likely suffer any doubts to remain as to bee-farm- 

 ing in one of its branches being well-suited to the gentler sex. 



Beet-cultivation for sugar has been successfully tried in New 

 Zealand, and thirty. tons per acre of first-class roots obtained; 

 but the much more ]_)rofitable durra millet or sovjIlo grass of Asia 

 and Africa, althouuh doubtless well-suited to the soil and climate, 

 ap)pears not yet to have been attempted on a commercial scale. 

 This lung-neglected source of sugar, after having been carefully 

 tested for some years in the United States, and found to answer 

 admirably and pay well, now menaces the position occupied by 

 the sugar-cane, the sugar-maple, and the beet. Sorgho has from 

 time immemorial been cultivated as a cereal both in Asia and 

 Africa ; towards the latter division of the globe it stands indeed 

 in the same position of its principal corn yiclder as rice occupies 



