TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3268, 22 December 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph THURSDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1881.

"Don't put all your eggs into one basket" is a precept that we have preached times without number since tbisjournal has been in existence; but durin? the last ten years how many new industries have been started in this part of the colony ? We do not think there has been one. The town of Napier, and the provincial district of Hawke's Bay, are just as dependent upon pastoral pursuits for their progress and prosperity as they were when the settlement was first founded. We have nothing else to fall back upon. If the wool and tallow markets are depressed everything falls into a state of stagnation ; men are thrown out of employment in all directions; property after property tumbles into the hands of the wealthy ; money lenders fatten on the wants of the people ; the rich become richer, and the poor poorer. The soil and the climate are surely capable of something more than tbe production of wool, but no one seems to have had the enterprise to try any other than tbe beaten track that the early settlers were compelled to follow. " Tbe wheat of 1000 bushels at 3* gives the cultivator £150 the year. The fleeces of 1000 merinos at 3s also gives £150 the year. Tbe oil of 360 olive trees, at one gallon a tree would give an equal return ; and the ordinary 80-acre section of 20 chains by 40, with trees planted in single line on its boundary, at 22 feel apart, locates the 360 trees. The 1000 bushels of wheat will have taken the area of, say, 100 acres, The fleeces will have needed 1000 acres. The olives occupy four acres only. On the same data, if, twenty years back, five thousand 80-acre sections had been thus planted round with a single row of olive trees, their annual produce would now have equalled £750,000 ; yet the total area they occupied would be 20,000 acres only." The above quotation from the South Australian Handbook is worth attention. It is calculated to make us think how much more might have been got out of the land than what has yet been attempted. A special report furnished to the Cauterbury Times respecting the culti vation of tbe olive supplies some interesting particulars. " Great Britain alone imports from all sources some four million gallons of olive oil annually. Olive plantations at Grasse (Southern France, lat. 43—38 N.), are worth from £200 to £250 per acre. The Island of Corfu has an area of say 50 miles by 25. Two-thirds of its surface—at a rough estimate—are occupied by olives, allowing for occasional cultivations of wheat, potatoes, flax, vines, and oranges. Much olive oil and fruit is consumed by the inhabitants themselves, who number some 80,000; but their annual export of olive oil approaches a value of £500,000. At the tweed cloth factories of Geelong they use twopenny worth of oil to every pound of cloth ; and one of these factories alone turns out 300,000 yards of three-quarter tweed per annum. The average weight of a yard of three-quarter tweed is~l3 ounces, and £2000 worth of oil is required for the 300,000 yards, their sole annual demand." The arguments that are sound in their application to certain parts of Australia, are of equal value as regards New Zealand. The olive will not grow anywhere and everywhere, and therefore in those districts specially favored by nature for its introduction, the work should be taken in hand with a will, as a matter not of mere local importance, but of national interest, and as a ineanß of very materially increasing the national prosperity. But tbe olive will not grow anywhere. Long periods of drought will affect it but slightly, and for a short time it will resist considerable frost, " provided that the thawing takes place under fogs or mild rain, or perhaps den?e smoke." Bleak places or barren sands are hostile to the olive ; but it loves the sea air. Hill-sides are more eligible for its culture than plains, and " it thrives best on a free, loamy, calcareous soil, even should it be strong and sandy." The olives of commerce must not be expected to grow on tbe Canterbury plains ; but in some other parts of the Middle Island, and throughout tbe North Island they would—almost beyond question, grow luxuriantly. There is evidence in this direction. In Akaroa there is—or was at a recent date—an olive tree which bad reached a height of about 30 feet; and in this North Island four varieties of native olives are known.