NEED FOR MORE ORDERED DEVELOPMENT

Northern Advocate, 25 June 1937, Page 10

NEED FOR MORE ORDERED DEVELOPMENT

Dr. Marsden’s Address To Dairymen

t Special to “Northern Advocate ” 3 HAMILTON, This Day.

The opinion expressed by Dr. E. Marsden, secretary of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, in an address to the National Dairy Conference yesterday, that, if New Zealand was to build up a strong and vigorous people, it must avoid any unnecessary waste or loss of natural resources or of human labour.

He said, that we were improving some land, but other larger areas were being allowed to deteriorate. “We are using up our native forests, perhaps wastefully, and growing new ones of exotics. We are said to be fishing out some of our seas. We are exhausing some of our minerals, often wastefully. We are altering our rivers, thus harnessing some and causing excessive floods in others and, lastly, we are replacing our human resources either by better or by an average of lower calibre,” he said.

State of Conservation. Viewed as a whole, continued Dr. Marsden, when they ‘mined” the soil and took the minerals ready to hand, they appeared to be passing definitely from the pioneering exploiting stage, to the stage of conservation and the necessity for more ordered development. Dr. Marsden said that the great number of seepages in New Zealand led one to the expectation that there probably was oil stored somewhere. The great trouble in the past had been the determination of the exact contours of the various strata of underground structure. It had latterly become evident that great expenditure of energy and money was required in mapping the country accurately in great detail, so as to deduce the nature of the underground structure. More Accurate Estimate Wanted. Following the example which had led in recent years to the location of payable bores in other countries, the use was desirable of delicate geophysical implements to endeavour to estimate this sub-surface structure more accurately. He explained that the preliminary work was beyond the resources of concerns other than those which had good and experienced technical and financial qualifications. The scientific technique of oil location and drilling was advanced | to a point which it was difficult to appreciate. However, many geologists considered that some of the areas were really promising. The prospects were good, concluded Dr. Marsden, but it needed organisation and technique of a different nature from that to which New Zealand had been accustomed in the small efforts of the past.