THE WEEK.

Otago Witness, Issue 1971, 29 August 1889, Page 21

THE WEEK.

" Nunquam allnd natura, allud sapientla dlxU."— Juvenal. " Good nature and good s«ose must ever join." — Pops. Among the various Koyal Commissions which were appointed last year, Eiaiirjo and the cofct of each of which Farmers. j QS t been stated to the House in a. special return laid on the table, the Commission of Inquiry into the working of the Lincoln Agricultural College in Canterbury figures for a total of £121, It will be remembered that the report

of this commission, upon which we recently took occasion to comment, condemned unsparingly the whole management and working of the institution, which was declared in round terms to be a costly and ridiculous failure. The students, who have to pay £60 yearly in fees, had learnt and were learning nothing of the practical work of a farm ; the cost of the farm itself and the improVements thereon had been quite alarming ; the general tone of the institution was such as to induce the students to despise practical labour as beneath them, and to do such as fell to their share with kid gloves on ; while the operations of the farm itself resulted regularly in heavy loss, and the financial arrangements were so absurdly wasteful as to compel the commission to recommend the dismissal of the entire Board of Management and their replacement by better men. Apparently they do these things better in Victoria. An elaborate report on the Dookie Agricultural College which appears in the Australasian of the 10th instant will be interesting reading for those responsible for the very disappointing results of the Canterbury institution. At the Dookie School of Agriculture no fees whatever are charged for the educational course ; all that is required of the students is £25 a year for their board, lodging, washing, &c, a sum -Inch is estimated to barely cover the coh' . .\ otwithstanding these liberal arrange lciits, the college is more than self -supporting. The profit on the work of the farm was sufficient last year to pay the salaries of all the masters and the general expenses of the' institution, and to leave a surplus of about £550 bo go towards the purchase of machinery and stock. Probably the secret of this gratifying state of affairs is to be found in the fact that the students do all the practical work of the farm themselves. "It is made the sentiment of the school that work is honourable, and that there is no department of farm work unbecoming a farmer." The report gives extracts from the diary of one of the students, containing such notes of his daily work as " ploughing " ; " cutting chaff "; " carting straw and manure" ;" killing sheep "; "milking, and working cream separator " ; cleaning buggies and harness " ; " mixing seed " ; " feeding pigs " ; " carting manure from cowyard " ; " drawing engine " ; " cutting up bullock " ; " driving reaper and binder " ; " stooking " ; "at threshing machine," &c, &c. That is the kind of institution to disarm the contemptuous hostility of the " practical man " for theoretical knowledge of agriculture ; while the admiration of those who are sensible enough to know the value of theoretical knowledge as well is fairly earned by the completeness and excellence of the arrangements for indoor study. We hope it is not too late for Lincoln College to earn for its«J9 a similar record. The remarkable development of the mining industry within the last few The Hgtltoi in months isas noteworthy forits Mining. comprehensive range as for its rapidity of expansion. If the revival had been confined to gold mining alone it would still have been curious, in that it includes all the principal branches of that industry — namely, ordinary alluvial mining, reefing, and dredging. A typical instance of the development of the firstnamed division of the gold-seeker's work is afforded by the description, which appeared in our mining pages last week, of the Island Block Company's works, which are on a scale never before attempted in this country; while other noteworthy instances are to be found at St. Bathans and other places. The Blue Spur ought to be — but we are afraid it is not — in the same honourable category. °As t regards reefing, it is only necessary to name the word to bring examples by the score before the reader's mind. A similar remark applies to the dredging and beaching branch ; for the Welman dredge and the Shotover beaches are topics of talk wherever two or three are gathered together in the name of Mammon throughout the length and breadth of the country. But it is not, fortunately, only in gold mining that a revival of the great mineral industry seems to have fairly set in. The discovery of tin at Stewart's Island, though it cannot be said to be of proved importance, is a most hopeful sign of the times ; and there is as yet no sufficient I reason for discouragement in the active prosecution of the work of discovery and development. The announcement of the striking of a splendid new seam of coal in the Shag Point mine, together with the successful opening of a new and abundant coalfield in the near neighbourhood, is a gratifying proof of the diversity of underground treasures, which in these islands only await the application of capital to render them available to the markets of the world. Last, but perhaps not least, there has come within the last few days an encouraging piece of news from the petroleum sinkings at Hawke's Bay, where the oil is described in a telegram from the manager to'the directors as " coming up freely in the pipes." Everyone will wish success and a giant boom to the undaunted company which has so long persisted in the laudable ambition to " strike oil."

Petroleum mining, if it should indeed become one of the industries of a Baby the country, would be looked industry. upon quite as a " little

stranger " by those engaged in other kinds of mining ; but if it should fortunately develop to anything approaching the extent known in other countries, it would not be long in taking high rank among the departments constitutionally assumed to be presided over by the Minister of Mines. It is, perhaps, not generally known that the present enormcus trade in lamp oil and other petroleum products was originally started in Scotland, where the first supply of kerosene — then and ever since called " paraffin" in the Mother Country, but identical for all that with the well-known American article — was produced by the distillation of the oil from shale-coal, about 35 years ago. Only a few years after this the Americans started the plan of simply boring boles to great depths in the ground, to reach a point where they could tap the oil stored under great pressure in the cavities and crevices of the underground strata. Thus began a business which has since provided cheap light for almost all the houses, towns.and villages in the civilised world where coal gas is not obtainable, has found lucra-tive-employment for thousands of workers,

and has enriched hundreds of lucky . finders and owners beyond the dreams of avarice. The present output of refined kerosene from the oil wells of the world is about 3,000,000 gal per day, which means about 5,000,000 gal per day of the crude article as it comes from the wells. America is still the principal source of supply owing to the extraordinary number of wells in active operation ; but the Russian petroleum wells at Baku, on the Caspian Sea, are in every way the most remarkable known, the pressure below ground being so enormous that rjuge columns of oil spout day and night hundreds of feet into the air. One of these columns alone supplies regularly nearly 11,000 tons— or 3,ooo,ooogal— in the 24 hours. Unfortunately this marvellous well, like all those in Russia, is poor in the refined article, giving little more than a fourth of its weight of pure lamp oil ; if it yielded as richly as the American wells its refined produce would exceed that of all the wells of America put together. Canada has recently claimed to possess, in the almost unexplored Athabasca region, the largest petroleum fields in the world. There are immense fields also, long known and partly worked as sources of " Rangoon oil," in our newly acquired kingdom of Burmah. The uses of petroleum are developing in the same enormous ratio as the sources of supply ; besides lamp oil, it yields nine-tenths of the lubricating oil of the world, benzine, gasoline for private gasworks, and many other products. Engines worked by petroleum fuel are coming steadily into use, especially in Russia, where over 1000 steamers and locomotives are driven by the combustion of oil alone. This brief review will give some faint idea of what the success of the Gisborne Petroleum Company would mean to New Zealand,

Our correspondence from Nenthorn deals with a peculiar difficulty A niniaturo which seems to have arisen Dcndiock. in connection with the

development of that rising township, and which we commend to the consideration of the committee just appointed by the House to devise a satisfactory scheme of local government for the colony. The same difficulty has perhaps arisen in other places before, but we do not remember to have heard of its occurrence in an equal degree. It appears that Nenthorn is very near the boundary between the two counties of Waihemo and Waikouaiti, and inside the latter; but the only means of access for heavy traffic lies through the former county. A very large revenue is accruing to the Waikouaiti Council from the various mining and publicans' licenses and other local contributions ; and this revenue, if the field becomes permanently established, will be increased to an unknown extent by the duty of 2s per ounce on the gold raised, all of which goes to the local body. Meanwhile 25 out of 27 miles of road from the nearest railway station to the township have to be kept up at the cost of the Waihemo ratepayers, who do not and never will receive a penny of income from Nenthorn and its mines, The traffic is enormous — in fact, quite beyond the power of the carriers to overtake — and the state of the roads under the circumstances may be imagined. The Waikouaiti Council would no doubt be perfectly willing to provide for all the legitimate wants of the township in the way of roads if it could; but unfortunately there in no really practicable line of road in that county, and the traffic must perforce follow the existing road until the Otago Central railway reaches Middlemarch. The Waihemo council, on the other hand, would be just as willing to keep the road good, if the Nenthorn contributions should come their way to provide the wherewithal. The two councils, which for all we know to ihe contrary might be quite willing to come to a mutual arrangement satisfactory to all parties, are entirely precluded from doing so by the state of the law, which makes no provision for a rapprochement of the kind; and meanwhile the unfortunate miners and business men at Nenthorn pay up all the time and get no road in return. They are not interested in legal quibbles, but have a keen eye to their roads, and they probably execrate both ohe local bodies concerned with ardent impartiality. We hardly expect any startling results from the committee of half a dozen estimable legislators who are now supposed to be filling an order from the House for a brand-new sub-constitution, deliTery a fortnight from date ; but if they want a practical puzzle to exercise their reforming ingenuity upon, we have much pleasure in presenting them with the above.

We offer our most sincere congratulations to Lord and Lady 6'nslow on Tho Tise.RogM the happy recovery gf their uonsehoid. child. Everyone r^us£ have felt for the parents in the distress and anxiety which has fallen to their lot so soon after they had made their home amongst us ; and everyone will experience telief and thankfulness in knowing that the crisis of Lord Cranley's dangerous illness is happily past, and the little sufferer gradually getting back his health and strength again. Captain Savile, the aide-de-camp to his Excellency, who was struck down by typhoid fever almost at the same time as Lord Cranley, is also steadily mending. So far, the Governor has met with singular illfortune in his expedition to the antipodes in search of colonial political experience, the acquisition of which, we were told at the time, was the end he sought in accepting the New Zealand Vice-royalty. At the very outset, it is understood that the gambols of old* ocean were distressing to Lord Onslow in a singular degree, notwithstanding the magnificent proportionsof the great steam liner which brought him out. An accident to one of the household followed, shortly after landing; Lord Cranley's first illness, a mild form of jaundice, then developed itself— leaving him at its disappearance little fitted to fight through a terrible fever ; Lady Onslow was nearly run over by a cart while out walking ; and then followed the dangerous illness of Lord Cranley and Captain Savile, both of whom have almost literally passed through the Valley of, the Shadow of Death . To have left a happy home and a statesman's rank in England only to be met with such heavy strokes from Fortune at the other end of. the world must have seemed lately to Lord Onslow a hard fate indeed. Let us all hope that the remaining term of h\a career as ouj

Governor may be a bright one domestically, as there is every promise of its being officially.

Revolutions are becoming so common now a-days that busy people have Berointion very Httle time to pay attenH«TolMlon.. t i on to them( bnt ifc may be

as well to note the fact that several of them are at this time either just beginning, or in full swing, or only newly concluded. Just now the most interesting one belongs to the latter category. The scene of this was the. peaceful island of Hawaii, and the originator a hare-brained half-caste named Willcox, who conceived the idea of laying violent hands on the local King and extracting a new constitution and a change of Ministry from that monarch under threat of dethronement. In spite of the hackneyed nature of this very ordinary variety of revolution, some passing notice may be bestowed upon thia one in view of the importance of the locality to New Zealand communication with America, and still more on account of the fact that revolutions of any kind there are of such extremely rare occurrence. In Hayti, or Crete, where there is more or less of a boom in revolutions just now, people would hardly feel comfortable unless an excitement of the kind were either* in progress or in prospect, and the civilised world really caanot be bothered to go into the details of every fresh recurrence of the national diversion. In a fourth island, Samoa, where a third-rate revolution was duly brought off not long ago, peace now reigns supreme ; the threatened intervention of three foreign nations has been averted by the fury of a tropical storm, and at last accounts Malietoa and Mataafa were weeping on each other's necks, with the third royal revolution-monger nowhere. Tonga, a fifth insular kingdom, afforded us lately the spectacle of a veiy respectable revolution, in which the " Premier," a divine not careless of earthly ambitions, figured veiy much to his disadvantage, together with a few other clerical politicians of similar bent of mind. On the other hand, while insular revolutionists have been developing their pursuits lately with tolerable success, continental advocates of " topsy-turveydom " have had rather a bad time of it. The Emperor of Germany has been threatening to "shoot down " the anarchists in his dominions ; the Queen of Servia has been defeated in her attempt to upset the affairs of that kingdom by directing the action of the infant ruler into the ways of Russia; the dynamitists who murdered Cronin are probably destined to the rope; and Boulanger, Rochefort, and Dillon are all sentenced together to imprisonment for life in a fortress. The moral of recent, if not of universal, experience would seem to be that, whether it comes off or whether it does not, revolution is a hard road to cravel. The real wonder is that under such circumstances the supply of revolutionists should be- -as it always is — so much in excess of the demand.