AGRICULTURAL PREJUDICE.

Hawke's Bay Weekly Times, Volume 2, Issue 79, 13 July 1868, Page 170

AGRICULTURAL PREJUDICE.

(From the Canterbury Times.) In a new country where labor is dear, and time is money, we are too apt to walk in the: old beaten pathway—to follow a certain course of action—simply because it is the custom of the country. We never stop for a moment to consider whether something better could not be done, or whether another mode of action could, be pursued with advantage. Anything that has been tried and has not met with the merely partial success j is accepted as the best thing ;and however many its defects may be, is rarely altered or amended, because people will not give themselves time to consider as to the best means of effectingan; improvement.The:old characteristic of .the .Ebglfeh farmer 4 —- ;a : pig-headed reverence for everything iike an ancient: pustom, and a supreme contempt, .for; everything /that is new Jangled—has been in. a very great degree reyived out here, and; with :pre-

cisely similar • [results/ Much that might have been useful has been discarded and neglected,' because: tbe old plan was known to .be a safe one to a certain extent, and the new one : was ah experiment which might perchance fail, and people had hot time to risk that.. And in no case does our argu-. ment apply so readily as to a custom which has prevailed here for a long time past—of only sowing two or three different kinds of wheat. The Essex White and the Pearl are sown over fully nine-tenths of the area of land in wheat here. That: these are good kinds, and have each their peculiar merits, we do not pretend to gainsay; but they may doubtless be improved upon, and till they are proved to be tbe best, should not be allowed to monopolise the public favor—for the true test of competency is competition, not monopoly. . So long as there is such prejudice in favor of two or three kinds, nobody will care to introduce fresh ones. What we would be glad to see. introduced here would be an annual “ grain show,” at which the various qualities of different kinds <>f grain might be fairly tested by competent judges, and prejudices which exist not only for different kinds of wheat, but of oats, barley, and roots, might then be dispelled or strengthened in the most satisfactory of all ways—open competition. Prizes might also be given for essays on various subjects in connection with agriculture; and we remember a subject that was once given in Australia, —“ The best means of farming a fifty-acre section.” —a subject which might be very appropriately selected here, and which, we have no doubt, would draw out the ideas of many practical men.