ONE HALF OF THE WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 102, 2 May 1930, Page 6

ONE HALF OF THE WORLD.

■ One half of the world does not know how the other half lives! If you arc spinning along into the country twenty or so milee from town and you paesi a patient, plodding horse drawing an old-fashioned buggy or a dog cart with a cheerful young man perched above his buckets and a box, likely enough it will be the herd tester going from farm to farm on his business of testing the cows of the fanner's herd for individual butterfat production. He comes to the farm once a month, arriving before the evening milking, and remains overnight, returning to his testing station with hie samples after the morning milking. One would think- he must be heartily tired of cows after sampling the milk of hundreds of them each month, but just as the nurse is ever ready to maintain that the latest new baby is one of the finest she ever saw, eo the herd tester is always sympathetically excited over the farmer's latest prodigy of a cow. And what a nomad he is! Imagine spending each night of the month under a different roof, and that not a hotel where you. may give your orders, but a farmhouse where you are iiot exactly visitor nor employee and must adapt yourself tactfully, to existing conditions. There is such a vista of possibilities, even about meals. Suppose you happened to arrive each day for a fortnight at a houee where it was corned beef day (corned beef can be borne with a fortitude when it comes in the family meal cycie once in every few weeks, but imagine it day after day!). But the tester only laughs when such possibilities are suggested. Generally he is eo well treated that the few exceptions do rather stand out in hie mind, he says. "Of course, there was that time I landed at ," and he sucks hie pipe reflectively. "And there was that chap who put me to sleep in ." Then, as I wait expectantly, he shakes his head decidedly. "No, if ever T launched into reminiscence my only really comical experiences would be quite unprintable!" —M.A.R.