SERICULTURE.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2011, 15 October 1869, Page 2

SERICULTURE.

(From the Oamaru Times. ) Our readers are aware that the cultivation of silk has been attempted in the Province of Nelson, and it appears that the experiment is likely to prove a success. A letter from Mr Batchelor—the introducer of sericulture in Nelson —addressed by him to the honorary secretary of the Acclimatisation Society of that Province, has been published lor general information in the Colonial Gazette, and it appears by it that he has experimented now for three seasons; and anent this Mr Batchelor states that his cocoons “ have all been obtained from worms fed on the Tuscan mulberry. Last season he commenced hatching the worms on the Ist of November, and the greater portion were in cocoons by the end of January—from ten to fifteen days over the proper time. The number hatched was over 3,000, and it took two hours per diem to feed and attend to them, though with experience, one person could, we are told, with proper appliances, attend to an almost incredible number. Four or five successive hatchings might bo fed on the same trees during one season. In Persia so many even «0 eight or ten lots are raised in one summer, while in St, Petersburg!!, short as the summer

is, four hatchings have been obtained. In Italy and the south of France, the number is five or six. As the mulberry flourishes remarkably well in Nelson, Mr Batchelor “ does not see ■why sericulture should not be as successful there as in France or Italy; and as the worms are fed in-doors, artificial heat could be supplied if necessary.” He also adds that “ sericulture is now becoming quite a common industry in several American States, one person keeping a million worms, and preparing to double the number so soon as he can raise sufficient food for them.” On the question of the quantity of food necessary, Mr Batchelor appears to have fed his 3000 worms upon the leaf produce of twenty mulberry trees, and is satisfied that he could have fed three times that number. As to the pecuniary result, ho calculates that after the trees have been planted three years, LIS per acre per annum would be netted ; this is calculating the price of raw silk at 20s per lb., but the value being now 70s, the profit at that rate would be LSO per acre. Once the trees are planted they require little trouble, and their value yearly increases, as the quality of the silk improves with the age of the trees upon which the worms are fed. These prospective results are sufficiently attractive to merit the attention of colonists, the more especially when it is borne in mind that there is an almost unlimited market for silk, as will be exemplified by the following figures for which we are indebted to an article in the Sydney Morning Herald of recent date. Hence we learn that the imports into the United Kingdom alone reached, so far back as 1820, no less than 1,206,722 lbs. ; in 1829 the figures stood at 2,116,596 lbs., the highest import of any one year. In 1851, from Bombey and Bengal only, 592 tons of raw silk was shipped, representing a money value of £619,318, the greater portion finding its way to England, and in 1861 the weight of cocoons alone was 981 tons, valued st £2-11,000, while the same year silken fabrics of Indian manufacture to the value of £106,612 were imported into England.