TEA AND SILK FAEMIXG IN NEW ZEALAND. 245 



when his opinions will be found to be these : — " In a new 

 country the sericiole industry cannot be expected to take deep 

 root unless it is initiated by a large model establishment, which 

 is a nursery not only for plants, but for worms of the right sort, 

 and at the same time a training school for reelers and breeders. 

 . . . This opinion is corroborated by facts. If we follow, 

 step by step, the history of sericiculture, we find that in every 

 country where it is flourishing — where, as in France and Italy, 

 nine-tenths of the silk produced comes from within the walls of 

 the cottage — we find that this industry invariably originated in 

 a model establishment, formed and supported by public money." 

 Mrs. Bladen Xeill of Victoria, already alluded to in this essay, 

 in quoting the above remarks of M. Eobinet in the course of an 

 eloquent paper on sericiculture in Australia, read before the 

 British Association at Bristol in 1875, said : — " If a nation so 

 industrious as the French, if in a country where the sericiole 

 industrv has been flourishing^ for three centuries, and j-dves 

 employment and bread to millions, if among producers whose 

 silk is considered the best in the world, the Government still 

 find it advisable to take this step, I leave it to the public to 

 decide what the Government of new countries ought to do." 



Many even acute persons have fallen into the error of believing 

 that tea farming and sericiculture have been essentially cottage 

 industries at their first commencement in a district ; that these 

 eminently scientific undertakings, in the countries where they 

 are at present found, liave risen from the blundering experiments 

 of the peasant to the dignity of the vast establishments we now 

 see. Any one who cares to dip into the literature of China will 

 quickly be disabused of the fallacy as regards both tea and silk, 

 and M. Eobinet and other continental authorities dissipate the 

 chimera if attempted to be thrown around the latter product. 

 Indeed, it may be accepted Avithout question that in a new 

 country, all that the untaught cottager witliout industrial tradi- 

 tions to guide him can hope to accomplish is simply to grow 

 indifferently well the bushes which form the basis of the 

 important twin industries under review. Technical education 

 is absolutely required whenever the tea and mulberry cultivator 

 seeks to pass the merely agricultural stage, and it is at this 

 point, if not previously given, that Government aid is desirable 

 and has been ungrudgingly and sometimes lavishly bestowed in 

 all countries in which the industries have reached a high pitch 

 of perfection. It was the Government of India that in 1834 

 and afterwards ])lantcd and conducted the first experimental tea 

 gardens in the Seebsaugurand I )ei)roghur districts, thus founding 

 the present vast tea trade now annually ])assing through Calcutta. 

 Not until 1839 and 1840 was it that the bulk of these gardens 

 became the property of the Assam Company. By both local and 



