SCIENTIST ON THE BUDGET

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 72, 15 September 1911, Page 5

SCIENTIST ON THE BUDGET

INTERESTING SPEECH BY MR. G. M THOMPSON. By Telegraph—Press Association. Wellington, Last Night. One of the most interesting speeches delivered in the House during the present deibate was that made by Mr. G. M. Thompson, the member for Dunedin North. He referred from the scientific point of view to the re-grassing of the Otago Central lands. In that region desert conditions prevailed, and it was a region of small rainfall. It had been enormously overstocked in the past, and burnt to an idiotic extent. He advocated treeiplantinsr, but added that it was a fallacy to think that tree-planting increased the rainfall of a country. It did not, but it made a great difference in the humidity of the climate and in the retention of moisture. He maintained that it was necessary for the Government to go in for afforestation on scientific lines. It would pay the country to get a thoroughly trained man, and pay him £IOOO a year. There was a lack of scientific training evident in our present forestry methods, For instance, we had been planting millions of eucalyptus stewartiani, which had l>een proved' by the greatest living authorities to be the most worthless of all the eucalypti as a timber or wen as a firewood timber.

Mr. Thompson put quite a new complexion upon the glowing periods- with which the Government have been wont to refer to the manufacture of nitrate manures in connection with the proposed livdro electric power scheme, If, he said, the Government imagined that they were' jroing to make these fertilisers with the fair end of the current they were much mistaken. Enormous tension and enormous power were required. No power under iiOOO horse-power could ,b» utilised with the slightest hope of making fertilisers. With 10.000 or 20.000 horsepower they would have a better chance of making them. But another point came in, namply, the fact that these particular fertilisers were no n«e on our new lands. There would be little demand for them, either here or in Australia for many years to come. He as a scientific man, sounded a note of warnin? about State aid to the iron industry in connection with the Taranaki ironsands.