SERI-CULTURE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 954, 22 June 1881, Page 1 (Supplement)

SERI-CULTURE.

The Government has sent an order to Mr. Creighton, the agent for New Zealand in San Francisco, for a large consignment of silk-worm eggs of different varieties, and also for a quantity of white mulberry trees. An order has also been sent to Sydney for 500 white mulberry trees 2 years old. This looks as if active preparations were to be made at once for the introduction of sericulture in New Zealand. A section of the English press, according to the Home News, has been discussing very favorably the prospects of this industry in this Colony, and couples with it the cultivation of tea, which, it is believed, might be successfully grown about Auckland. It is pointed out that the climate and all the conditions are favorable to both. It is alleged, says the News that parts of Auckland greatly resemble the districts of China where tea and silk are most successfully grown. It is already proved that the mulberry will do well here, and Oriental scientists have laid it down that as a r,ule where the mulberry grows, there tea will also thrive. We must confess that we should like some better proof than this, for we have a fresh recollection that the mulberry grows well in England, and we never heard of tea growing there. We hope in some future issue to give some particulars how it is proposed to get over the difficulty presented by the high price of labour.