GOOD NEWS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 543, 27 September 1881, Page 2

GOOD NEWS.

Our friends at Home are looking , f Tter our interests. They are just as anxious to secure a good supply of our cheese and butter as we are to find a remunerative market for our produce, and they are sparing no pains to urge matters on. News is to hand that the Lady Jocelyn is being fitted out with refrig rating chambers on the newest and best principles, and that she will reach Lyttelfcon about the end of the year. Our fervent hope is, that she will carry Home as part of her loading a large quantity of Pen'iisula cheese and butter, and that it will arrive in such condition as to show our English friends the splendid qualities of these edibles our magnificent pastures can produce. Thee should bo no difficulty in the case, as the Lady Jocelyn is well fitted for such a purpose, being one of the largest sailing vessels afloat, with a very roomy between decks, where, we suppose, the freezing chambers will be situated.

Every exporter will have a fair chance now, for one lot of inferior cheese cannot spol a better, if both are frozen, and we should think that even if new cheese were sent, that would hardly be considered ripe enough for our ordinary exportation to Australia, that it would, at any rate, be in the same state at the end of the journey that it was at the beginning. There is one thing, however, that we would impress upon all farmers, and that is, only to send really good chee-e to England, so that New Zealand may gain at the outset the reputation (which bhe thoroughly deserves) of producing cheese and butter of the very best quality. This is of the last importance, for England is not like Akaroa, where a cheese is a cheese, and, with few exceptions, good and indifferent alike fetch the same price at the stores. At Howe, on the contrary, quality is everything, and merchants do not mind paying a gteai. deal more for a really good article. We must also remember that every new thing has to establish itself in public favor, and if a prejudice is created against New Zealand cheese, it would pass into first hands at a very low price, and it would be small consolation indeed to know that the best qualities will be afterwards retailed as prime Cheddar or Cheshire. Owing to some of the first wheat sent Home being inferior, a certain prejudice existed against it, and for years Adelaide fetched a much higher price, though we are glad to see that it has by its intrinsic merit at last taken its true position in public favor, and realises nearly, if not quite, as much as that grown in South Australia.

As with the wheat, so with the cheese. The first shipment that reaches Home properly refrigerated, will be carefully examined by buyers, and on the verdict passed on it will depend the price, not only of that, but of many other shipments, That some of the best cheese made in the world is made on the Peninsula is an undoubted fact, and we must take care that we do not send anything that will tend to give our friends at the Antipodes an unfair estimate of our produce.