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We are in the happy position, thanks to those who have gone before, of being able to profit by their mistakes, as well as by their successes, for the latter have been many and notable, though not up to the present time enough to set the thing going in a large way.
Now the main cause of failure in all the attempts has been that each has been isolated and only in a small way. I ask, would wool growing, started on a small way, say one or two hundred sheep, by an isolated individual here and there, have been commercially successful?
The case of Mrs. Bladen Neil is one of the most widely known, her initial mistake being that her plantation was formed beside an old bush road, where dust lay ankle deep, to be sent in clouds over her trees at the passing of every bullock team.
The mulberry will bear prolonged drought bravely, it will bear flood of any moderate character, but dust is fatal, for the worms must fed with clean leaf, and to dust and wash acres of it is a simple impossibility. In spite of this and other difficulties she succeeded in producing silk, which was pronounced by English buyers excellent. "Send," they said, "tons, instead of hundred-weights, of this quality, and we will buy".