136 THE EVOLUTION OP OUR NATIVE FRUITS 



Sir Thomas Lombe, an eminent silk manufacturer in 

 England, appears to have been the leading agitator of 

 the silk industry for Georgia. Oglethorpe was thor- 

 oughly convinced of the practicability of the industry. 

 The trustees secured Italian silk -growers to accompany 

 the colonists. Encouraging results were soon reached. 

 Samples of raw silk began to be received in England. 

 "In May, 1735," writes Jones in his "History of 

 Georgia," "the trustees, accompanied by Sir Thomas 

 Lombe, exhibited a specimen to the Queen, who desired 

 that it should be wrought into a fabric. This was 

 done, and Her Majesty was so much pleased with the 

 manufactured silk that she ordered it to be made up 

 into a costume, in which she appeared at Court on her 

 birthday." In or about 1750, Pickering Robinson was 

 sent from England to France for the purpose of in- 

 specting the growing and manufacture of silk, and 

 upon his return, the trustees of the colony despatched 

 him to Georgia, upon a salary of one hundred pounds 

 a year and an allowance of twenty -five pounds for a 

 clerk, to assume charge of the silk industry. Oper- 

 ations were begun at Savannah in 1751, and in order 

 to encourage the growing of silk, the most exorbi- 

 tant bounties were offered for cocoons. Despite all 

 the forced and statutory encouragement, the silk in- 

 dustry did not return the money expended upon it, 

 although the annual production of the raw product 

 reached many hundred pounds for a number of years. 

 As tobacco had gained the supremacy in Virginia, so 

 rice and cotton soon became the dominant industries 

 in Georgia ; the troubles with the mother country 

 depressed the markets for silk, and after 1766 silk- 

 growing rapidly declined. 



