THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13286, 19 September 1906, Page 7

THE FLAX INDUSTRY.

BEQUEST FOR A, BONUS.

IMPORTANT PROPOSALS BY THE GOVERNMENT. [BY telegraph.— special correspondent.] Wellington, Tuesday. An interesting statement in regard to the Government proposal for assisting the flax industry was made by the Minister for Lauds at Shannon yesterday. A petition was received by Mr. McNab from a number of flax-millers, asking that the Government should place on tho Estimates a sum of £5000, to be paid in bonuses to the producers of the first 500 tons of Phonnium tenax, of g.f.a. quality, grown under cultivation.

Mr. R. Gardner, of Palmerston North, urged the Government to take into consideration the planting of waste lands -with flax. Mr. McNab said the experiments which were being made in his own forest nursery in, tho South showed that by growing flax from seed one would have to wait, ho should say, three years longer than by growing from plants. The Government was not in a position to grant bonuses for flax-growing, for the simple reason that it did not know how to start about telling people the way to earn the bonus. It did not know which were the best varieties, how they should be planted, or anything about them. It wild plant perhaps a thousand acres for the amount of the bonus, and yet it might be won by men having only 10 acres under flax. If they bad asked him to spend £5000 in learning what was to be learned, ho was with them right up to the hilt, but when they could not even tell people how to go .about earning the bonus it would be unwise to offer it. During the coming season the different experimental stations were going to take quantities of hemp refuse from neighbouring mills, and ascertain what use it could be put to in tho way of manuring and fertilising. Tho Government was preparing a scheme under which young men, who were going up for "the degree of doctor of science at our colleges, could apply the whole of their year's research work to the investigation of New Zealand materials. It had been arranged that at any rate one student each year would be engaged on investigation 'of the flax plant. (Hear, hear.) The whole of their work, then, for the doctor's or master's degree would be applied to that plant, and the information procured would be the property of the Government, and would be published. By that means they hoped within the next fewyears to collect information that would enable them, not only to introduce better methods, but'also to utilise by-products.