Transcription

[Page 433]

                           Silk Culture                                       3


crop for cash sale, endow a family with opportunity and means for employment which would exercise their thinking and administrative faculties, give them healthy attractive work on their own domains.  Incidentally at the same time, by force of example, they would further fresh settlements and occupation of more land, and bring population to a neighbourhood where the industry may have been started.
The co-operative system, by which a grower of leaf and a labourer rearing worms for cocoons bargain to share results on terms agreed upon, is much in vogue in very many places. Often the party who grows the leaf also supplies the eggs {or better still, worms still hatched, or about to hatch} to be reared by a second party- a great mutual help to both parties, who must have confidence in each other. In Italy, where this method largely prevails, the whole of the cocoons as soon as completed are taken to the local "market," weighed by the "public weigher," and sold at the open market-rate, or by previous contract to some dealer at a fixed price, or more generally to a "filanda" or "reeling mill" for ready money.
In regard to silk-growing it may be remarked that in case of the proprietor of the trees raising his own cocoons by means chiefly or wholly by his or her own personal labour, or with assistance of the handy-work of members of the family, the whole or nearly whole of the produce is profit, and profit without interfering with the growth of, or attention to, any other crop. The cash is certain and immediate, earned more quickly, generally with fewer disappointments, and realizable more readily than any other agricultural crop.
Some cocoons reared in Sydney, November, 1893, on inferior mulberry leaf {unpruned multicaulis} : - "Empties," without floss or other matter, weighed net about 4 grains each cocoon. Sample cocoons arrived with grains, December, 1893, the gift of Signor A. Martelli, reared in Italy : - 
8 cocoons, empties, with a little floss, weighed gross, including attached thread and label - variety, Bianco Indigeno, 26·6 grains.
10 cocoons, with less floss, weighed gross, including attached thread and label---variety, Gransasso, 58.8 grains,
11 cocoons, with some floss, weighed gross, including attached thread and label---variety, Fossombrone, 65.5 grains.
15 cocoons, with some floss, weighed gross, including attached thread and label---variety, Novi Ligure, 84.5 grains.
19 cocoons, clean and little floss, weighed gross, including attached thread and label---variety, Giallo Indigeno, 92.6 grains.

Average, 5.2 grains.

   A lot of 8 cocoons reared in the County of Cumberland, by Signora Belotti, November, 1893:---Empties clean and good, with floss as taken from the bush, with husk, &c., inside, averaged 6.74 grains.
   The results thus shown are well up towards the standard gained for many years by Mr. Brady at Curl Curl and at Antony with different varieties of silkworms.  They also correspond very fairly with the experiences of Mr. James Fry, Mr. George Thorne, Mrs. Hobbes, Miss Thorne, and Miss Ottmann, all in this Colony.
   There can be no doubt that, with proper food and fair management, New South Wales may obtain and hold a foremost place in the production of silk in open competition with any part of the world, and certainly with results much better than now obtained in " cheap labour ' countries.
   The Mark Lane Express (London, 11th December, 1893) from its Paris correspondent says :---
" Owing to the favourable temperature of the spring (in France), and the care exercised in the selection of eggs, the results of the silkworm season

 

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