NATURE'S BOUNTY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 136, 6 December 1939, Page 9

NATURE'S BOUNTY

A CENTURY OF GAIN

HISTORY MADE ATTRACTIVE

New Zealand's dependence uppn the soil and the development of agricultural and pastoral.activities in the past hundred years are strikingly illustrated in the HaU, of Progress, in the Government Court at the Exhibiilon. Facts and figures are made to tell their own story, and; "v^hat they have to say is convincing and in parts romantic. ... . . .

The Hall of Progress deals only with the main headings of primary production. It has nothing, bf; the - detail that marks the displays of the Government departments around it,'but there is a directness about the statistics, and their pictorial representation Aon the four walls that rewards a clqse study. Emigration from . England to New Zealand is the subject of thei first panel, which reproduces the words of Edward Gibbon Wakefield extolling trie' colony in an address to a Select Go^nmittee of the House of Commons;<;:He called it the fittest country in the world for colonising, "with the finest cliirtate and most productive soil.",' •;,.• Next is shown the. arrival- of the-; pioneers, the clearing- and solving of land, the discovery of gold in the fifties, and the magnet which this proved to be in bringing newcomers to the colony. The Gabriel's Gully rush in 1861, it is stated, doubled, the population in five years. Panels depict the prosperity which higher wool prices and expanding- , sheep•'.' flocks brought to the. country,^in.,the sixties, stabilising farming promise ©f great- things. for^the ..foftyre. - ■ Those years saw the rise. of" a pastoral industry based on woplprbdiietibri, and between 1860 and.-1870Ptfte!.number of sheep in the country'rose from 2,000,000 to il,060,000: ''-*■' ; J : ;:'■?> ;

THE "HUNGRY EIGHTIES."

The intensive public ' works programme of the seventies and ,the improvements in v transport ,e£id communication which also took,place in that period* are given their,'full share of recognition in the '.panels,- and then the Visitor is taken ori to'the "hungry eighties," when years of hardship and depression were experienced through the,slump in wool, prices and the lack of markets for fat stock., Britain the story proceeds, was insurgent need of "all the meat and dairy produce that New Zealand could supply, but the barrier was time and Wheat growing was developed to offset lowwool prices, but' the main industry of the country .continued ..to, languish. Then came refrigeration, bringing with it a new prosperity and opening up boundless possibilities for -New Zealand. ■• , ~. > •

The whole of one wall is- devoted to the romance of refrigeration, from its advent in 1882 to' the present time. Little is needed to elaborate'the story, which is summed,up in.the, following simple .words: "New Zealand is now the world's largest exporter of dairy produce', and frozen mutton;-lamb, and pork. Developments in refrigeration have made possible a growing export trade in chilled beef. ' The annual value of refrigerated exports is £36,000,000.", - More recent - history is told in the remaining panels,,wh,ich depict the intensive clearing of land as the possibilities of refrigeration became realised; the* subdivision of large estates for dairy "farming; the opening of the Main Trunk line in 1908; the development of the hydro-electric power system; the settlement of returned soldiers on the land, and th« resultant boom and slump in produc-,-tion values; the serious beginnings of afforestation; iho sharp decline ia primary production returns during the •depression years; arid -the gradual recovery' in prices which once more put the national income on a sound basis. i "A,SMILING: FARM."

"And so, from forest and fern, tussock and scrub;"'runs the wording of the 'final panel in • the series, "our people have wrought a smiling farm, , a proud nation in the southern seas." Displayed around the liall are examples of farm and implements, from a' 'remarkable, reproIductionof the-first1 reaper toj modern. j dairy equipment in all its complexity .and. efficiency. .A contour model of Arapuni, with sound commentary and synchronised lights, has a prominent place, as well it should, considering the part that hydro-electricity plays in. primary production, ' and there are i other models of equal interest. History, presented',in this way is easily and profitably read. (