NEED FOR IMMIGRATION.

Waikato Times, Volume 92, Issue 14263, 14 January 1920, Page 3

NEED FOR IMMIGRATION.

) (T the Editor.) . Sir, —Re the proposed light railway j from Hamilton to Raglan and Kawhia, ! I would like to point out some out- - standing facts which seem to have escaped public view in this honest attempt at development. Though wise is he who learns from experience, yet wiser slid is he who learns from other people’s experience; and for that reason it is well to profit hy the experience j gained hy countries which have passed through the process of development under similar conditions. I think Egypt is the best country to lake our cue from, because she raised a great Empire upon a desert of sand, by irrigation and forestry. Though we have no desert sand to contend with in the Waikato, yet we have a vast area of pumice country that would make splendid pasture land if irrigated. The richest land in Egypt is that portion overflowed by the Nile floods, because it gets the benefit of the solvent matter ami leaf mould washed by the tropical rains, from Ihe vast forests covering the high lands of Abyssinia. But history shows that before Egypt’s greatness, the population increased so that the area overflowed by the river did not provide enough food, and famine and pestilence swept the land until Die people were tortured into progress, and the art or science of hydraulics was mastered by the Egyptians. They devised a system of lock canals by means of which the flood waters were stored up and conveyed to tracts of land lying above the level of the river, and was distributed over the whole valley, so that each lot or farm received a just share, and thus, by irrigation, the desert sands were changed to smiling fields, and a starving people raised to opulence. If by irrigation the sand can he cultivated and produce rich crops our sandy soils must be a still better proposition. The important function performed by forestry in agriculture is to provide the plant food for the more tender herbage which does not possess the strong solvent acids in their saps with which to dissolve the hardened rock matter into solution, which is the only way in which plants can assimilate plant food. A pioneer tree can provide itself with food from the bare rocks, which it does by impregnating the moisture with a solvent which solves the rocks and converts it into solution, which is partly taken up the sucker roots, and about half soaks away, and helps to feed other vegetation. A large tree would suck up about a ton of plant food in solution in 24 hours, and as it would lose half, there would he one ton of plant food soaking away and carried off to enrich the land, thus each tree is a sort of food factory. Not only this, but a plantation placed on a dry hill withhold the rain water like a large sponge; impregnate it with solvents and plant food to feed the pasture on its slopes, and further solve and prepare stores of plant foods just as the Abyssinian forests do for Egypt. My attention was first drawn to the necessity for irrigation in this island by the rich growth of grass and clover in wet seasons, both on the ■ north gum lands and Hie Waikato pumice land and the dry burnt up aspect in summer. The light trams or railways would get over the road trouble in the cheapest way. If you take up a register showing the industries of towns on the Continent of Europe or Africa you will find linen is manufactured in most of them, yet here we see the plant growing wild, and we import its product at heavy expense. Our water power runs to waste, and we are surrounded by all those absentminded beggars who got up at their country’s call, and faced the poison gases and liquid fire, carrying New Zealand’s stars on to glory; can we not lead them on to wjike the silent wilderness with the laughter of happy children. How many girls are pining to become wives, helping to make and share the wealth with our brave lads? Anyway this opens the question of applying science to methods of development.—l am, etc., G. WESLEY, Glen Massey, January 10, 1920.