LUCERNE IS A GOLD MINE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 974, 18 February 1910, Page 4

LUCERNE IS A GOLD MINE.

j How men will take risks in frigid i regions and face the terrors of the tropics in the lust for glod? The disappointments, which are numerous, are nut a bar when the next rush is announced. Yet the land industries afford a much safer and surer way of amassing wealth, for after all the discoverers of the richest goldfields ' seldom get a competency out of their luck. On the other hand, the soil yields to the humblest husbandman returns whi:h never peter out if he is of the right stamp. What a gold mine, for instance, is lucerne' No i crop will multiply the value of land so rapidly, if onions be excepted. But the latter crop can soon be overdone, while lucerne is never s drug on the market. Land which a few years ago was bought from the Grown at £1 per acre, and then only thought to be fit for sheep, ia now worth in New South "wales and Victoria up to £IOO for lucerne culture. Water is artifically applied, of course. But where the rainfall has to be depended upon entirely, the land which will carry the king of fodders is valued at up to £SO and £<so, and on the rhoiee spots

even more. There are not many gold mines which will give returns like this for the same outlay. There are a great number which give a good deal less, and quite a larger proportion not yet guilty of a dividend.