FROZEN MEAT FROM NEW ZEALAND.

Evening Star, Issue 6038, 19 July 1882, Page 4

FROZEN MEAT FROM NEW ZEALAND.

['Times,' 2nd Junk.] To-day wo have to record such a triumph over physical difficulties as would have been incredible, and even unimaginable, a very few years ago. Had any fervid Protectionist told rarliament in the heat of the Freetrade controversy that New Zealand would send into our London market 5,000 dead sheep at a time, and in as good condition as if they had been slaughtered in some suburban abattoir, he would have brought on himself a storm of derision, and would have been otherwise than honorably mentioned on a thousand platforms. But this has actually come to pass. We seem only just now to have arrived at the certainty that meat can be brought in good condition a mere week's voyage across the Atlantic in the most temperate of the earth's zones. The present arrival is by a sailing ship, after a passage of ninety-eight days across the tropics ; indeed, for a large part of the voyage in heat which Englishmen find almost intolerable. The ship that has accomplished a feat which must long have a place in commercial, indeed, in political, annals, is the Puncdin, belonging to the Albion Shipping Company. An apparatus, supplied by the Bell-Coleman Mechanical Refrigeration Company, has kept the temperature constantly down to -Ocleg below freezing point. Under a torrid sun and a tepid sea, an arctic winter has been ateadily maintained below, where coolness and circulation are generally least expected. How this has been done, and what is the nature of the mechanism, we have yet to learn. The fact is prodigious. ft is the produce of a very large grazing property, extending over half-a-dozen parishes, brought from the antipodes, and discharged into our dead meat market in a day. Sheep-farming has always been regarded in this country as something to fall back upon. When tenants would not pay, or th<> land either ; when the most enterprising agriculturist had become weary of steam ploughs and chemical manures ; and when, finally, there arose tho question whether to pull down an acre or two of farm buildings or rebuild on a better plan at an indefinite coat, there always remained the last alternative of letting sheep into the ground to live as they pleased in it. At the very bottom of Pandora's box there still remained the "prairie value." The unhappy King, who, while his subjects were fighting for and against him, wished himself a poor shepherd watching his sheep and notching his stick, has had many an imitator among our own gentlemen farmers. Nothing like sheep farming, unless you have plenty of money and can run heavy risks. The last hope of the British agriculturist seems to be on the wing when the mountain slopes of New Zealand compete successfully with our own downs. But all thing have their day. Among the sights and sounds of tho past are the long streams of sheep flowing into Smithficld Market through all its narrow approaches on a Sunday evening for the Mond *y market. The market lias been latterly supplied more quietly, but not quite in so picturesque a fashion. But even the dead-meat market is undergoing a "sea change." As the total number of sheep in all our antipodean colonies is considerably more than twice that in the British Isles, it is impossible to say where this will end and how it will affect the destinies of this country. Few people have the land, or the money, or the skill, or the spirit to contend With such odds. Yet for everybody sheep-fanning has a certain fascination, for everybody thinks that he can take care of sheep, till he tries, and then finds that a good shepherd fully deserves his name. It is plain that ordinary people with a pastoral taste had better go where the land is to be got, and where the sheep are wanting shepherds. There is a certain grandeur in the thought of flocks of 20,000 or 30,000, and sheepwalks of twenty or thirty miles across. It is the real thing in comparison with our theatrical and make-believe scale. Of course, if all our wheat is grown abroad, and all our beef and mutton, and all our pork, and a good deal more, there will arise tho question—What is to be done with our land ? It is a problem which concerns land-owners more than the general public, who can, indeed, afford to look on and wait for the slow solutions of time. Even the dairy is revolutionised. Few people can say whether their butter and cheese ara English or American ; and if the Channel is ever tunnelled there may be several milk trains every day from France to this metropolis. Then, as for small husbandry, it is the very speciality of our neighbors, who will beat any Englishman in the productive management of an acre or two. So we repeat — What is to be done with our vast ancestral domains ? It appears to be generally agreed that planting may be carried on with some improvement to the climate, and certainly much to the scenery, though with doubtful profit. After a time, though not at first, plantations can take care of themselves. They always require watching, to prevent all kinds of ill uses —wood fires particularly. Such a suggestion, however, can only be understood as offered to those whose income is independent of land, and to whom it 3 cultivation is an amusement and no more. People who, to use the common phrase, have more money than wits, that is, who do not go into scientific husbandry—simply because they have no occasion to do so—may devote themselves to improving the face of the country, and reproducing the forests it is so Eleasant to read of. Epping Forest has now een secured as a forest for all time, and the only pity is there are not more of them. Of course, if every country gentleman could sow his laud with shillings and get back sovereigns we should not recommend so slowgrowing a crop as oaks and beeches, and as the relation of outlay and return is generally the other way, and people do not always succeed in getting even shillings for their sovereigns, they do not lose much by planting, and they will earn the thanks of their remotest successors, not to say of a grateful nation. It may be said that even the arrival of 5,000 sheep in a day from the antipodes need not alarm anyone who thinks of the distance, the risks, the coat, and certain irregularity of a supply tinder such conditions. We have no wish to alarm anyone, but contingencies must be faced. Now near the close of the nineteenth century, and on the eve of centenaries recalling events that changed

the face of the world ami turned the course of history, we find still the truth of the old saying that nothing is so certain to happen as the unexpected. All the problems of life are receiving new elements of difficulty, and the country gentleman Avho finds his carcasses underbid from the world below oinfect is only in the sanift ease an his neighbors allaround. The inventions and improvements we ar<i so delighted to enumerate may be «ood for the world on the whole ; indeed that hardly comes into question : but they arc '"iiiully available for all purposes, and can be used against us as well as for us. They arc but weapons which naturally HI into the hands of the strongest or the cleverest. Education ought to keep pace with progress, even in its most mechanical and commercial forms. If it fail to do so the consequences cannot but be disastrous to those who have to get tho means of living, or even only to keep what others have got for them. At present nothing is more serious than the prospects of many thousand young gentlemen now entering life with the idea that a just and appreciating world will find places and positions for them according to their quality and just claims. While tho aristocratic and gentlemanly world increases day by day what they are to live on either refusestoincrease or sensiblyand even rapidly diminishes. Acres do not increase ami multiply. Estates never increase without toil and thrift. The cattle are not on the increase. The hands to till the. land are everywhere decreasing, and the agricultural reports tell a sad tale of weeds and of land generally in bad condition, all for want of labor, which is now too costly or not to be got on any terms. Where arc tho men to be found ? is now the cry in many quarters where man was a weed half a century ago. The only thing that increases is the income derived from trade and manufacture. Happily, a large portion of this overflows from the seats of industry in a constant and beneficial stream, recruiting the exhausted strength of the land. It is the town that enables the soil to retain its full strength. But this does not prevent the continual up-cropping of a vast necessitous crowd asking for employ} ment-~that is, for life on pleasant, easy, and dignified terms. They must follow the old rule of tracing the Nile to its source. They see many a life-giving stream of food for man and beast flowing into this country across the broad seas, and they must go where the food comes from. New Zealand, from all accounts, ean"aecommodate a good many more, and is a very healthy, very pleasant, and extremely beautiful country. Its only troubles arc that it has too much of what wo want, land and produce, and not enough of the people we are ready to send them.