THE BUDGET.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 26, 15 September 1911, Page 5

THE BUDGET.

'INTERESTING SPEECH BY MR G. M. THOMPSON (Ter Press Association.) Wellington, September 14. One of the most interesting speeches delivered in the House during the present, debate, was that made by Mr G. M. Thompson, the member for Dunedin North. He referred from the scientific point of view to the regressing of the Otago Central lands. In that region desert conditions prevailed, and it was a region of small rainfall. It had been enormously overstocked in the past, and burnt to an idiotic extent. He advocated tree-planting, but added that it was a fallacy to think that tree-planting increased the rainfall of a country. It did not, but it made a, gieat difference in the humidity of the climate and in the retention of moisture. He maintained that it was not essary for the Government to go in fer afforestation on scientific vines. It would pay the country to g<~t a thoroughly trained man, and pay him £IOOO a year. There was a lack of scientific training evident in our' present forestry methods. For instance, wo had been planting millions I of eucalytus stewartiani, which’had been proved by the greatest living authorities to l)e the most worthless of all the eucalypti as a timber or even as a firewood timber. Mr Thompson put quite a new complexion upon the glowing periods with which the Government have been wont to refer to the manufacture of nitrate manures in connection with the proposed hydro electric power scheme. If, he said, the Government imagined that they were going to make these fertilisers with the fag end of the current they were much mistaken. Enormous tension and enormous power wore required. No power under 5000 horse-power could be utilised with the slightest hope of making fertilisers. With 10,000 or 20,000 horsepower they would have a better chance of making them. But another point came in, namely, the fact that these particular fertilisers wore no use on our new lands. There would he little demand for them, either here or in Australia for many years to come. He also, as a scientific man, sounded a note of warning about the State aid to the iron industry in connection with the Taranaki ironsands.