The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 1882. MR FEDERLI'S MISSION.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 594, 24 March 1882, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 1882. MR FEDERLI'S MISSION.

Mr Federli is about to leave us. In another week his earnest, anxious face will be missed, and many will regret his absence. Never did true knight crusader take lance in hand, and, decked with the sacred symbol, issue forth to uphold the Cross against the infidel with more fervour and faith, than Mr Federli has shown in his zeal for sericiculture. Never doubting that once established, the industry must be a great success, his energy has been untiring, and day after clay, and night after night, during the whole of his mission here, he may have been seen, explaining away a difficulty here, pointing out an advantage there, till at last he has succeed d in instilling into others a portion of his own enthusiasm, and a great number of our farmers have resolved on giving the new industry a fair trial.

It must indeed have cheered him in his labors to find experiment after experiment succeed, showing more fully, day by clay, that if the trees were once planted, the success of the industry was assured, if the people would take up the matter. He had no little anxiety regarding the eggs, which, coming from the Northern Hemisphere, had to be hatched by artificial means, or would have been born when the trees were bare. (me would have thought that the worms so forced prematurely into life would have been sickly creatures, but, on the contrary, they showed their appreciation of their new home, not only by feeding voraciously, but also by standing, without any ill effects, changes of temperature which, strange to say, in other countries, would cau-e immediate death. Whether it is from the dryness of the air, or some other peculiarity of the atmosphere, it is certain they are hardier here than elsewhere, and that the parching nor'-westers, so distressing to hmuaiiity, have the effect of making the woru.s more veracious than ever ! The cocoons, too, that have been spun are of such excellent quality as to show that the insects have improved by the change, and the moths are so healthy that great things are expected from the eggs. Mr federli has determined on destroying any unhealthy ones, but the fact is, there will be no unhealthy ones to destroy.

Sericiculture has been so important to France that they call the mulberry •'ihe tree of gold" and M. de Rosny, in his translation of « Japanese treatise on silk calls it "an art considered best fitted to promote the morality of the people and extinguish pauperism in the Empire." In the introduction of sericiculture in a country, the first step should be the planting of the mulberry, and the second to import tho silkworm and learn how to rear it. Both these things have been done here on a very small scale, but it will require seme years of patient cure before the golden result is gathered. So soon as seri dculturc is well established, the poor-, st occupant of a rod of ground and of the humblest dwelling may, by their own labor, gain profit from it; and thus by utilizing family labor and time otherwise left improductive, does it bring domestic comfort, and enable neglected resources to contribute to the pile of National wealth.

" The soil " says a colonial writer on the subject, " is, when made fruitful, after all the great source of wealth. Without its cultivated produce very few manufactories and but little trade and small | opulations, exist. We undermine the soil to extract mineral treasures, we rise a vast amount of grain from the furrowed surf-ice, growing rich in new districts, but with equivocal and exhausting results in the older ones ; and we feed cattle and sheep on our pastures for the comiortable

clothing of multitudes by our wool, and providing them with meat and dairy nrodnce. Still there remains un-irpro-priated a large amount of productive power in the substance of our soil, capable of yielding great and varied additional wealth so soon as capital net la or shall supply the mechanism for its extraction, and one of these mechanisms i the white mulberry or silk tree," It has been mooted that the individual capitalists and manufacturers of Europe would do well to transport a part of their capital and skilled labor to these new countries to plant the industries where the materials they need are produced, but we doubt if they will ever do so. As we have before stated, it is not the raw silk alone that gives a profit to sericiculturists, the eggs or grain for the reproduction of the silk worm being an exceedingly valuable commodity. The silkworm sickness which began in 1848 in the south of France, had by 1865 spread over Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Asia Minor, and part of China. All these countries which used to grow their own grain, have now to import from the only country as yet not affected, viz., .Japan. . The result has been an immense increase in the price. In 1851 in France, the price of the grain was about 2s Gel per ounce, and in 1875 as much as £2 8s 4d per ounce was given for good grain ! There is no limit to the demand, for in 1870 the egg requirements of France and Italy alone were estimated at 7,000,000 of ounces, and all the grain we could raise here would no more lower the price of grain in Europe, than our Canterbury wheat does the price of wheat in London or America.

Mr Adams, Secretary to Her Majesty's Japanese Legation, in his report of two journeys of 600 miles into the irterior of that country in 1869 and 1870, made to procure information on the state of silk culture, speaks in the warmest terms of the clean, healthy, and comfortable condition of the people employed in it, and of the direct and practical interest taken in its success and extension by the Government of the country. He found mulberry plantations in pa ches, and in rows round the fields, and in lines between the Jands of corn, along river banks where the soil was light and stoney, and along the sides of hills, so that it will be seen, as before stated by us, that no additional expense need be incurred in planting trees about the farm, for they can just be put by the sides of the fences where they will serve as shelter for the cattle and make very useful timber.

But want of space compels us to pause., and in doing so we can only reitetate the hope that Mr Federli's efforts have not been thrown away, and that in years to come he may be able to say, "It was my enthusiasm and untiring industry that mainly contributed to the successful establishment of sericiculture on the Peninsula."