MORE NATIVE INDUSTRIES.

Southland Times, Issue 1716, 18 March 1873, Page 3

MORE NATIVE INDUSTRIES.

«. TO THE RDITOS OF THE TIMES. Sis, — I was much struck the other day on paying a visit to your beautiful port of Bluff Harbor, to find that the vast stores of marine wealth which are scattered on its shores seem as yet totally uniippreciated and unappropriated by either the agricultural, commercial, or scientific community of your city, and I am tempted to offer a few suggestions as to how some oi these good things that are now scattered about doing no good to any one, might be utilised, and made profitable for all the community. I allude to the vast stores of sea weed, and as one profitable use to which it might be turned I may name its collection in heaps to serve as manure. A. second use for it might be found in making it into kelp as a preliminary step towards establishing a email manufactory of iodine on the spot ; or of making the kelp available as an article of export j to countries where iodine is extensively manufactured. The manufacture of iodine from kelp is so very simple a process, and the plant so inexpensive, that wsro the kelp only prepared on the spot, the most uneducated party could be taught the whole process by any one who knew "how to do it" in a few hours, or days at the most. Probably these few hin.s may be enough to lay before the public at present ; aud were the Bluff community once beginning to make a little kelp, we might possibly live to see the day when they would " tak' a thocht" and turn some of their Bea weeds into bottles and carboys. — Yours &c, Stokes akd Pokes. Invercargiil, Bth March, 1873.

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