The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1911. GOVERNORS AND AGRICULTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 37, 7 August 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 1911. GOVERNORS AND AGRICULTURE.

Many New Zealand Governors liave recognised in a graceful way their belief that agriculture is carried on in New Zealand by vague and complimentary reference to "our settlers," very much as if it were rather good of them to say a kind word for the farmer. This attitude is excusable in men who come from a country whose life-blood is not internal agriculture, and a Governor, therefore, who has intimate personal and practical knowledge of the business which keeps us all from bankruptcy is a personage to be welcomed. Lord Islington frequently and helpfully talks agriculture not in a dilettante way , as if It were very good of him to mention it,, but as If he had fully persuaded himself of the truth that New Zealand lives on agriculture and tliftt ideas and help from any reliable source are of great importance to every person in New Zealand, The other day in Otago he showed he had more than a book knowledge of irrigation, a Subject that is becoming increasingly interesting and necessary to Otago, speaking of the wonderful results he had Himself seen in Egypt and South Africa. First-hand familiarity with the Bubject of agriculture makes a speaker in New Zealand welcome at any time. The study and discussion of agricultural sub-jj-'ts iii.crrtakcn for ill; iiu'c.-a.'e of knowledge and output aids farmers greatly. The time must come when the closer settlement of the land will make intensive culture unavoidable, and success will not go to the man who works like a bullock without thought and scientific knowledge, but to the man who has ] the best scientific training and knowledge. This, of course, is true even now with those farmers who hold land for what it will produce and not for what it will sell at. Agriculture is in its infancy in New Zealand, and while comparatively large areas are held to be necessary to make a living, the closest attention will not always be given to scientific culture. Necessity creates the need for utilising every inch of land and, thus breeds the ideas that are the genesis of success. There are evidences that part of the great tide of British people now flowing to America will be diverted to Australia and New Zealand, for such a tide is necessary to our future existence, or, at least, to our success. Science achieves results the patient pioneers could not conceive, and there is no means 30 helpful to the advance of science and the creation of useful ideas as immigration. The increase of population, too, will have the effect of placing the true value on land, for it is only by assessing the worth of the products derived from a given piece of land that its value can be computed. A Governor who knows these things not as the student "knows" by reading what someone else lias to say about them, but by personal contact, is a useful official, for he wields an influence making his utterances of practical utility.