MR, GLADSTONE ON AGRICUL-TURAL PURSUITS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9635, 6 October 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

MR, GLADSTONE ON AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS.

A fete in aid of the building fund of the Elawarden Institute and the annual show of the Buckley and Ha ward en Horticultural Society were jointly held in the grounds attached to tlawarden castle a few days ago. The prizes were distributed by Mrs. Gladstone on the terrace in front of the castle. She was accompanied by Mr. Gladstone and several members of the family, all of whom were accorded an enthusiastic reception by a vast concourse of people. Mr. Gladstone, replying to a vote of thanks to Mrs. Gladstone for her services, said:—"Ladies and gentlemen,—l am, I (ear, a very indifferent substitute for my wife—(laughter)—and it is only in virtue of the duty she has performed today that I have any title to address you. I say, gentlemen, i am a very indifferent substitute. Ladies of late have taken to public speaking—(laughter)—and it is my deliberate opinion, unless) we look out extremely sharp, they are very likely to beat us in that accomplishment. I beg every one of you to study this reflection, for it may be productive of serious consequences. Although we call this a flower show, and although flowers are a great ornament to this world of ours, and a great comfort and blessing to us all—(hear, hear)yet it is an inadequate description. We look not only to flowers but fruit—(hear, hear)and not only to fruits but roots(hear, hear, and laughter). Nay, we go beyond products of the earth in vegetable form. The whole of the care of poultry, the production of eggs, the care of bees, the manufacture of butter—of itself a most important branch of commerce—are really include within the purposes of this little institution. The j French have long been given in a, much I greater degree than we are to what they call la jntite culture— the small culture — that is, the culture of minor and secondary objects connected with agricultural pursuits. It. may appear as if these were in themselves unimportant. The transactions in a little garden cannot be upon a very large scale, but when the aggregate of these branches of the small culture comes to be made up it is a vast aggregate-(hear, hear) — and you may depend upon it that even the commerce of this country may derive serious and important extention from the extension of these branches of the smaller cultivations, and that nothing is more likely to bring about the extension than the multiplication of institutions such as that of the society whici is responsible for the present flower show. Ido believe that the example of Hawarden, which began to be set about twenty years ago, has been useful in this respect; and these are times when those whose business it is to draw forth the resources of the earth and the services of man have been severely visited, and cannot alTord to neglect any rational and probable means of adding to their own comforts and advantages by increasing the comforts and advantages of others, because whatever is produced from the earth in excess of what we have previously had confers a double benefit both upon producer and upon those for whose use the particular commodity is brought into existence (hear, hear). I do hope that many of you will deem this subject as nob unworthy of serious consideration. It certainly is my belief that much may be done in many branches of cultivation outside what have hitherto been considered the principal pursuits of the farmer ; much may be done for bettering the position of the agricultural classes, and for enabling the community at large to profit more abundantly by the powers with which God has endowed the earth for ministering j to the means of our subsistence and our enjoyment (cheers).