NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 261, 8 November 1904, Page 2

NOTE AND COMMENT.

Hie Piistoralists' Ifeviow, in an arTll'.' rniiTi- ticl ° under tlle NATR IST PS" BboV ° hcndinff '' expresses the Xew Zealand is ccrST"the luckf est country in the world. Kirst the Will). 1 hen the Australian drought made up to,. any jn Somh Alncan demand. N ()W (u rZ'r c, ' ossbred w, *°' hud added a am ° Unt to ,lcr income than k"* th ° d,, ° u ff h t put together. No wonder the New Ze alanders laugh at progressive land and mtome taxes and Arbitration Courts and all tiife other small worries of » socialistic policy ! With wheat high and butter production developing rapidly, New Zealand is flourishing at every point of production. But the rise in the price of crossbred wool is what has topped up her prosperity. Some critios have noticed that her sheep stock lias been diminishing the last years, but our correspondent

poi*ts out that last year's ligures .show an increase in the number of breeding ewes, which portends a recovery in the total figures this year, whilst tiie, point has been reached when Ja.nmv.s are to be tempted 'io Sell ewe iambs for freezing—indeed they are worth more to keep or sell lor bceeding purposes. A goo,:! lambing has been experienced, and the Now Zealand farmer flatters himself he has not much to fear from Australian .competition ill lamb, which is the New ypaland spiKialty, and that the 'Argentine would have competed with hi 111 more seriously in this line before now if it ever meant to. Happy | New Zealand, which can play with i Focialism, and borrow money right [and left, and yet go on adding to her income year by year from the most legitimate sources, it may be some consolation to Australians to know, adds the Review, that New Zealand hud ten to fifteen years in the valley of dopression and humiliation—it worse, and until the frozen meat trade became an assured success apparently a more hopeless depression than any Australia, lias ever known.