SILK CULTURE

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 81, 3 October 1923, Page 9

SILK CULTURE

POSSIBILITIES OF NEW, INDUSTRY

(rROM OUH OWN CORRMPOXDINTJ

SYDNEY, 26th September.

It's an ill wind that blows nobody good. One of the Sydney papers sees in the cataclysm that has overwhelmed Japan, and destroyed its great silk ih&us; try, an opportunity to set the silkworm at work in this State. It sees the possibilities of a great back garden industry for boys and girls, and reckons^ that, with 50,000 youngsters cultivating silk-" worms in New South Wales, the foundations of a great national industry will be laid. To foster the movement it is offering £100 in prizes for the boy or the girl who cultivates the greater number of cocoons in the metropolitan area and in the country districts. Already scholars in metropolitan schools have made a start planting cuttings of white mulberry trees, which are obtainable free from the Curator of the Sydney Botanical Gardens and the New 'South Wales Silk A6sociation. The best'fpbd for the silkworm, it is pointed out, consists of the leaves of the white mulberry. They can be fed on lettuce leaves, but the silk i s of an inferior quality. "While, according to an. entomologist, there is no reason why lettuce, leaves as a food for silkworms cannot be used as a temporary expedient, the mulberry leaves constitute the chosen food for the silkworms in silk-producing countries abroad. Again,' lettuce leaves have a tendency to breed disease much more readily than when- tha silkworm is fed on mulberry leaves. It has also been the general experience that silk, when lettuce leaves have been used is lighter in colour than that from mulberry leaves.

Why- not let the slogan "Let's grow BUk_ be taken up, not merely in Australia but in Kew Zealand as well? It is a fascinating- industry, anyway, apart from the immense possibilities.