246 TEA AND SILK FARING IN NEW ZEALAND. 



supreme governments in India sericiculture was afterwards, in 

 1862, most liberally fostered, particularly in the Punjab, and 

 although, through some erroneous computations regarding tem- 

 perature and rainfall, the early experiments were disappointing, 

 the authorities were not deterred from making subsequent trials 

 there and in other districts with gratifying results. In America, 

 too, the first important silk harvest, obtained in California some 

 years ago, was the development of a government grant. It is 

 well known that for centuries the Governments of China, Japan, 

 Italy^France, — and in some measure Eussia, Turkey, vSwitzerland, 

 and Austria might be included, — have been aiding to develop 

 their sericicultural industries, and have cherished them in every 

 possible way when once established. The grand result has been 

 that out of the total import of raw silk into Great Britain per 

 annum (probably, in round numbers, over 10,000 tons) nineteen- 

 twentieths come from foreign countries, and only the remaining 

 twentieth, or say 500 tons, is the produce of our own possessions 

 reared by our own people. Vast as is, or rather was, the annual 

 silk crop of France, through the paternal er^ouragement the 

 industry has received from every successive / occupant of the 

 Tuileries, it might at this moment have been enormously greater 

 but for the spread of various diseases among the silkworms, and 

 a little event of a few hours' duration which decided whether the 

 Middle Island of New Zealand should in future be French or 

 British soil. Intimation having in 1840 been sent to Governor 

 Hobson of the North Island that sixty French emigrants in 

 the whaling vessel " Compte de Paris," escorted by the frigate 

 " L'Aube," were about to laud and form a settlement at Akaroa, 

 he ordered off Captain Owen Stanley (elder brother of the late 

 popular and distinguished Dean of Westminster, who relates 

 this anecdote in his memoirs of his father and mother) in H.M.S. 

 " Britomart " to anticipate and forestall the French by attaching 

 the island to the British Crown. The captain started at once, dis- 

 embarked on the spot, formed a hasty encampment on the beach, 

 and held a court of petty sessions under a tree, whilst the French 

 frigate was slowly working into the harbour. When the emi- 

 grants landed they found themselves under the shadow of the 

 British flag, and it has since been freely alleged, with probably 

 some degree of truth, that had the circumstances been reversed 

 and the French Government become the masters, every suitable 

 yard of land in the Middle Island would long ago have been 

 clothed with vineyards, mulberry and olive plantations. 



But enough has probably been said to show the desirability of 

 a little judicious fostering at first on the part of the New Zealand 

 Government. Such support out of the public purse, or an equiva- 

 lent in concessions similar to those already indicated, need only 

 be temporary, enduring for merely a few years at the outside, as 



