EXPERIMENTAL FARMS.

Press, Volume LXVII, Issue 14055, 29 May 1911, Page 6

EXPERIMENTAL FARMS.

In glancing through thc annual report published by the _.ow Zealand Department of Agriculture ono may look in vain for any reference to operations carried out on experimental farms in

the South Island. The reason—obvious enough, though we should hesitate to call it a good one;—is that tho Government has apparently never thought . lie South Island worthy of an experimental farm of any description. It would be unfair to say that the Department has never tried to do anything for the good of our farmers in the Dominion, because it has wrought according to its lights, but the light seems unnecessarily dim, and —so far as experimental farms aro concerned at any rate—it has all been focussed upon tho North Island. Is this state of affairs a subtlo compliment or just sheer neglect? Do the high officials of tho Agricultural Department consider that the South Island farmers are so advanced, and _o far beyond any need of assistance in their work that the services of one or two experts in tho experimental sphere of farm economy would bo wasted or unappreciated, or is it that they simply don't care? Thero is surely sufficient scope for at least three or four experimental stations in the South Island, and wo believe that under capable management such stations would bo made of very great value to that portion of tho farming community intelligent and keen enough to take an interest in the work. It cannot bo that there are no problems worth solving in tho South with regard to the management of farm and stock, because wo venture to say that a random choice of a dozen South Island agriculturists and pastoralists, out of the thousands following these occupations, could furnish as intricate a set of problems as would keep an experimental _tation busy for a year or two in solving. We are ready to believe that tho six er-perirnental farms belonging to tho Government in the North Island accomplish somo excellent and valuable work, and also we do not feel inclinod to side entirely with those critics who insist that an experimental farm should pay its way absolutely— an almost impossiblo ideal when tho cost of carrying out extensive experiments is remembered; but xx'o also believe that one or two efficient stations could be started and run in this island at a cost that would compare* well with some of tho Northern institutions, and at tho samo timo do as good, and we hope bettor, work. The desultory system, at present in voguo, of carrying out a more or less useful series of experiments on privately owned farms is not very satisfactory, and for other reasons it is perhaps inadvisable that the Government should co-operate with tho Agricultural College at Lincoln, but thero seem to be few serious obstacles to the Department of Agriculture instituting an experimental farm in somo suitable district from where valuable information might bo disseminated.

Wo aro told, by cable, that tho Premier of New South Wales, while walking dawn a London street, asked permission of some rivotters engaged on a hug© girder, that he might help them, " and dexterously completed th© job be"foro revealing his identity." But tho cable tells us nothing as to tho reason for Mr McGowen's quaint burst ot energy. It is,true that in earlier life he was a boiler-maker, and th© clang of tho hammers on the girder may have awakened pleasant memories of old days in the boiler shop. But he must havo often heard tho samo noiso in Sydney, and we do not remember reading of him seizing a hammer in the streets of that city, and driving in rivets with the vigour that perhaps distinguished him when ho was a happy caro-fre© boiler-maker, and tho worries and emoluments of office wero far away. It may be, of course, .that he is beginning to feel th© effects of London's hospitality, and took a Bpell of rivetting as wholesome exercise. Som© busybody of areporter happened to be thero at the time, and to Mr McGowen's annoyance, the story got into the papers. Or it may have been that tho workmen were not doing tho work co as to please tho Antipodean export, and he undertook to show them how to do it. In that case we should like to hay© heard their simple unaffected comments on their visitor's performance.

Personally, however, we should not .©'surprised if Sir Joseph Ward was really responsible for tho incident. He has heon occupying such a large amount of attention since tho Imperial Conforenco began, that it is quit© possible that other Premiers, particularly thoso who aro not delegates to the Conference, have begun to tire of seeing his namo in tho papers, and havo resolved privately to do something to counteract tho idea that Sir Joseph Ward is th© only "pebble on tho beach"—th© only Australasian politician on the Strand. Not for them the task of proposing vast changes in the British Constitution and tho Constitutions of tho Dominions, something that appealed directly to the man in the street, was more in their hue. and Mr McGowen seems to have been the first to manage it.

We trust, however, that the practice of reverting publicly for a few moments to the occupations of their youth will not be adopted too generally by the colonial Premiers, or London may come to tho conclusion that some of tho oversea Dominions have a somewhat peculiar taste in politicians. No temporary eclipse of fame that Sir Joseph Ward may undergo *will last long enough, we may be sure, to justify him in seizing a telegraph messenger's bag and delivering a Sew telegrams for him. But Dr. Findlay is so overshadowed by his chief that we so overshadowed by his chief that we may yet hear of him talking mellifluously of Socialism in Hydo Park on Sunday afternoons, and thus netting his name in the papers. Mr McGowen's example may bo fire the other visiting Australians that the cables may yet tell of Mr Pearce, the Federal Minister of Defence, and formerly a carpenter, taking a hand in building a stand for Coronation spectators, just for old time's sake, while his colleague, Mr Batchelor, turns into a foundry to refresh himself with tho scenes and occupations with which he was once familiar in the railway locomotive works in Adelaide. For a really enterprising Premier or Minister, there are dozen-** of ways of keeping himself before the British public and securing his full share of the fierce limelight that beats from the British

Press just now upon all oversea visi- j tors.

Thero could be but one result to a vote at a gathering of college undergraduates as to whether tho higher education has be.ii destructive of the ideals of home life, and the two lady stndents who undertook to support this proposition at the Dialectic Society's debate on Saturday no doubt recognised from tho outset that they were foredoomed to defeat. We trust that they took an unduly gloomy view of the future of some of their male -fellow-students when they declared that the universities wore turning out women "whose " idea of domesticity was to be able "to make a dish of confectionery." A feature of an interesting debato 6eems to have been tho candid admission of the champions of liigher education that tho kitchen was a woman's kingdom. This sounds like a surrender until vc read that they also claimed that the university-educated woman is the best home-maker. In this, it eeems to us, they claimed almost too much, unless, perhaps, the speakers had in mind tho kind of education that Miss Boys-Smith, Professor of Domestic Science at Otago University, gives her students. In the end, it probably rests with the woman. If she has . tho domestic instinct, the most profound university education will not spoil her as a housewife; if she has not. years of study of all the domestic sciences will hardly help her husband.

A little time ago, so recent that it seems but yesterday, the art of aviation -sprang into existence. It was, and is still, tho wonder of the age. Enormous changes were expected to follow the spread and development of the new science. It was to revolutionise communication, thc dreams of all the dreamers wero to como truo, distance was to bo annihilated by human flight. \Var was- to take on new . horrors. Cities were to be ruined, armies obliterated, and battleships sunk by means of explosives dropped from tho clouds. Nono of these things havo yet happened. Tho more progress is mado in aviation the more generally it is recognised that science has much to do beforo it endows man with the power of flight in anything like safety. Aviation is, indeed, so dangerous a pursuit that even in its infancy laws havo to bo mado protecting tho public against its perils. The. British House of Commons has now beforo it a Bill providing heavy penalties for aviators who may be guilty of endangering tho lives and limbs of the public. Hazards which tho airmen do not yet understand, and against which they cannot contend, mako it necessary thus to protect tho King and tho crowds who will gather to sec him pass to his coronation. Yet, though this indicates tho immaturity of the science, it is also a striking proof of the advanco that it has mado since King Edward was crowded. There wero no perils to be feared from tho clouds ten years ago, nor for years after that.