At the Royal Institution, London, on this day in 1898, Professor Geddes delivered a lecture on Cyprus.
He said the most immediate want of the island was irrigation.
After speaking of reforesting, he said the silk culture showed every prospect of success, disease was being coped with, and skilled direction being diffused by the School of Sericulture.
There were improvements the cereal and summer crops, and in the breeding of mules, oxen, and sheep.
The practicable ways and means of re-foresting were next discussed with the importance of the culture of fruit-bearing trees—orange, pomegranate, almond, apricot, fig, vine and olive, and especially of the carob or locust-bean tree—while the prospects of silk culture were also extremely favourable, the mulberry tree growing rapidly and well, and the silk being of peculiar excellence.
The moral and social progress of the population of Cyprus had been distinct, he said.