us that it is impossible to tell beforehand what
modifications in the produce of the new species,
what improvements, perhaps, may be induced
by the different soils and climates of the yet
untried countries where it is grown. For instance,
in mulberry silk, colour is of the utmost
importance. Japan silk, the produce of a peculiar
race or variety of worm, is naturally of a
beautiful white, which gives it great value;
Persian also and China silks are white. Bengal
silk is yellow; Italy sends us both white and
yellow. Bengal is a more even silk than China;
Italian silk is better than either. And yet
Italy is quite as much a foreign country to
the mulberry silkworm as any part of Europe
is both to the ailanthus silkworm and to the
ailanthus itself. The vegetable flourishes and
makes itself perfectly at home here; the insect
promises to do the same. There is, therefore,
good cause to make attempts, widely as well
as with energy and spirit. Good can hardly fail
to come of it, although we may be unable to
predict where exactly, or in what shape it will
come.

A correspondent, lately returned from Victoria,
appears struck by the apathy, want of
research, or what you will, on the part of the
English government, in respect to the silk–
producing worms which exist in, or might be
introduced to, our Australian colonies. In the colony
of Victoria, he says, not only does the castor–
oil plant grow to the greatest possible perfection,
propagating itself so abundantly by seed, that it
is difficult to eradicate it from a garden when
once established there; but it also carries on
its ample foliage a goodly family of bombyx
caterpillars. From the suitability of the climate
to the cultivation of the tree (which is not
seriously affected even by the hot winds of the
country), it would really appear to be a project
well worth the attention of the parties
interested.

Again, on the common gum–tree, or eucalyptus,
there lives a caterpillar which forms its
cocoons in three or four dead leaves, and which
hang pendent from the small branches of almost
every tree and bush. The leafy covering which
protects the silk much resembles in form the
closed petals of a fuchsia. The cocoon is
generally of the size of an almond with the shell
on. The silk is very fine in quality, and exceedingly
strong. Now, the gum–tree in Australia
is one of the most hardy of indigenous plants.
It is self–sowing and most tenacious of life, so
much so that it will even resist the action of
fire. Its leaves, too, are persistent—a circumstance
of minor importance, as the gum–tree
silkworm, like the others, would have its own
due season commencing in early summer, after
the young shoots of the year had made some
growth.

Unfortunately, the gum–tree, like the castor–
oil plant, is not hardy in England or in the north
and the interior of France, and therefore cannot
be looked to for a supply of silkworm food here
to any useful or practical extent. And it is a
question how far silkworm culture is suitable as
an occupation for a young and rising colony,
which requires every available pair of hands for
ruder labours and more important services.
Roads, canals, bridges, forest clearing, the
pasturage of flocks and herds, house building,
self–defence, and even encroachments on native
territory, leave little leisure for manly arms to
bestow on such light work as the culture of
silk, which yet might be made a source of great
gain. Women and children are still too few.
It is mainly amongst the redundant population
of Europe, China, and Hindostan, that we may
expect to find the number of light hands requisite
to make silk–growing a profitable, nay, a
possible speculation.

If our government would paternally and
benevolently interfere in the matter, the means and
the machinery are ready. We have costly
botanic gardens, both at home and abroad, of
which Kew may be taken to be the metropolis
and the mother–garden, for the importation and
distribution of rare, useful, or ornamental plants.
The gardens in the British colonies and
dependencies, such as Sydney, Trinidad, Calcutta,
Bombay, Saharanpore (Mauritius), and Ascension
Island, are maintained at an expense of
many thousands a year. Their intention is to
be depôts and half–way houses for the interchange
of valuable tropical and other plants. Now, an
insect whose very existence depends on the
culture of a certain tree, can hardly be considered
as an intruder, or as out of its proper place, in
a botanic garden. Economic entomology is so
thoroughly based on economic botany as to be a
necessary growth and consequence from it, and
not an unhealthy parasite or excrescence.
Foreign botanic gardens have judged they
acted rightly in maintaining a stock of cochineal
insects on cactus plants in their hothouses.
Bees are regarded as fitting inmates of a pleasure–
ground planted with honey–giving flowers;
and new–imported silkworms may surely claim a
place where only they can obtain their natural
nutriment. The cocoon is, in fact, almost as
much the natural growth of the tree as the
fruit, and silk clearly falls within the botanist's
domain. Such capacious minds as those of Sir
William and Doctor Hooker would hardly refuse
to allow the public to watch the progress of a
few scores of caterpillars at Kew; and as to the
colonial gardens, a word from Dr. Lindley (who
has given to the government wise suggestions
and valuable advice on more than one occasion),
would probably cause attention to be directed
to the study of little–known silkworms abroad,
We must not forget, however, that the English
spirit is self–helping; we are not in the habit of
depending upon imperial patronage; we do not
wait for emperors to set the first step, and take
the initiative in any likely project. Neither the
Southdown and the Leicester sheep, nor the
short–horn cattle, were derived from national
flocks or royal farms. Individual energy and
enterprise, often massed into the combined
strength of a company, are most generally the
agencies by which our grandest schemes are
carried into execution.