42 
most valuable products which almost every one acknowledges to be 
valuable, such as hemp, flax, olives, mulberries, etc., but which arc 
kept waiting for years solely on account of the dearness of labour. 
The agricultural training above recommended would supply this 
labour. Even a wealthy individual might reasonably object to risk 
and lose £500 in an experiment intended only for his country’s 
benefit, but such a loss once in a way would not matter much to an 
establishment supported by the nation. This especially applies to 
the new industry with which I ain best acquainted, and therefore 
naturally prefer to touch on, the cultivation of silk. The stumbling- 
block to Australia growing silk in immense quantities has been, and 
is, the utterly baseless belief that it requires an uuusal quantity of 
specially trained labour. I call tills idea utterly baseless, and so 
says Sir John Young at Sydney, whose practical experience as 
Governor of the Ionian Islands has been unusually large. He says : 
“ It is a product which involves very little labour ; it is committed 
to young people and to females ; in fact the girls of the villages look 
upon silk as their own peculiar province, and as given them for their 
own profit and for their own dress. It only occupies 35 or 40 days’ 
labour in the course of the year; and as it is carried on in buildings, 
it is not exposed to the climate in the same w r ay that many other 
kinds of cultivation are.” A production which occupies only 35 
days in the year, and is worked by young girls, certainly should not 
be excluded from Australia on the score of dearness of labour. But 
at any rate, this does not apply to it when grown in industrial schools. 
An acre of land planted with mulberries, for which the month’s 
occupation is supplied gratuitously, is worth permanently at least 
£50 per annum. Apply this on a large scale, and, combined with 
other similar resources, you not only create for these institutions 
constant lucrative endowments, relieving the Government of great 
expense, but train up a large number of the waste population to a 
certain knowledge of special employments, which they will ultimately 
diffuse up and down the length and breadth of Australia. 
THE GAME BIRDS OF INDIA. 
Read by H. E. Watts, Esq., at a Meeting held June 22, 1SG4. 
Of all countries there is none winch, in my opinion, offers a more 
promising field for the, labours of our Acclimatisation Society than 
our great Eastern dependency of India. This is pre-eminently the 
great market for animals in the Eastern world, from which we have 
to derive what supplies we require, to stock the comparatively 
scanty and barren lauds of Australia. The facilities which already 
exist for the interchange of productions are greater than those 
between this continent and any other part of the world. The 
distance which separates us is comparatively a short one—the com¬ 
munication is frequent, easy, and regular. The steamers of the 
