State Library of NSW
[Page 442]
8 The Silk Industry. __________________________________________________ exhibits would be very useful at schools and colleges. A number of children from the Deaf and Dumb Asylum were admitted free to this show. Though the display of flowers was an exceptionally fine one, no sooner did they discover the worms than the flowers were entirely neglected. This incident caused a good many conjectures as to whether it would not be well to teach these children how to grow silk.
"At each show numbers of people congratulated me on having such a splendid exhibit, as also did several foreigners resident in the country and other in town who had had experience, and were familiar with the silk industry in their own countries. They considered the demonstration most novel, interesting, most telling, and instructive. so attractive on each occasion did the worms prove the stalls were nearly all day simply crammed with people eager for explanations, while many had to go away without being able to get near enough to see or hear."
Conclusion. It must be well understood that the Government has no intention to pay students for learning. All that is contemplated is rather to lead the minds of private persons to exercise their own wits and exert their own energies for their own advantage, and only so far move in the case ot the art of growing silk as to endeavour to save beginners from mistakes, and spare them as much as possible from expense of failure in a pursuit new to the Colony, and to leave enterprise in this, as in every other direction, to its own natural development.
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