Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1895.

Te Aroha News, Volume XI, Issue 1719, 6 March 1895, Page 2

Te Aroha AN D Ohinemuri News AND UPPER THAMES ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1895.

The second annual show of the Te Aroha Horticultural Society comes off to morrow and will, we hope, prove a success. Nothing ban be more conducive to progress in gardening, agriculture, or pasturage, than the periodical comparison of products, and no country community can be in a healthy state which refuses to support, an agricultural show. A new, and most popular departure in this country, which gives a large additional interest to such institutions is the provision of prizes for so many articles of household industries, thus enlisting the sympathies of the more influential sex. While cordially endorsing, however, the principle of such shows, we think a great mistake is generally made in the principles on which prizes are awarded. The fattest pig, a mass of lard, the biggest pumpkin, are awarded prizes ; what ought to gain them are the pig which gives the largest amount of fuod on the least consumption, and similarly with the pumpkin.- Again fowls are judged by points, awarded for plumage, colour, and such like, while the practical settler wants eggs and breast. Dairy cattle have been judged of late years on sound principles by their actual yield of cream, not by exterior points' which may or may not, indicate quantity and quality in the milk, and all other exhibits ought to be judged in. the. same practical way. A show, too, is only one of the objects such a society should aim at. Frequent meetings of the members for the comparison of methods and results, and co-operation in sale and purchase, offer permanent and substantial benefits only to be secured by such associations. Isolation is the curse of the country settler, increases the price of requisites, depreciates the value of his products to the vanishing point and ]eives him dependent on liis’ own/ intelligence. Properly organised societies should remedy all this by, n't least, monthly meetings for the interchange of views, and by. combination: in buying and selling, thus securing decreased freights and avoiding glutted markets.