SIR TRUBY KING.

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18625, 2 May 1932, Page 4

SIR TRUBY KING.

HIS VARIED INTERESTS. it INFANTS, PLANTS, ANIMALS. At the annual meeting of the ■Maurlceville sub-bran oh of the Plunket Society Sir Truby King, founder of the Plunket Movement, was the chief speaker. , . . Sir Truby said he was pleased to see such. a good sprinkling of men present, for the society was really an organisation of parents. He ■ was especially pleased to speak at Maurloeville West, beoause he had gone there as a boy when the dlstrlot was first being settled. ' The whole countryside was then in . bush. Observing that he could talk as a soientlflo farmer, Sir Truby King went on to speak of his early youth, some of it spent in Masterton, and of how he eame to take up Infant welfare work. “It is really plants, and animals I am Interested in," he said, “not bahles—i I just chanoed on that.” To make & success of such an enterprise as infant welfare, he went on to observe, it was very necessary to .have a good business training. He bad himself obtained suoh a training as a member of the staff of the Bank of New Zealand. At the time of, the great slump, ‘ when the Government had had to come to the assistance of the Bank of New Zealand, however, he had sickened of business and determined to study medicine. Sir Truby King told something of his experience of'3s years in the Mental Hospital Department, mentioning that while at Seacliff he interested himself in scientific feeding of calves and obtained remarkable results. At a meeting of the Farmers’ Union In Wellington he thought of applying to the, feeding of babies the experience he ha'd gained in his calf-rearing experiments. He had been speaking on the artificial feeding of calves, and one of the farmers at the meeting had •asked him If he would show them howto make humanised milk so that this might he given to babies. This was the germ of the idea, said Sir Truby, but it was riot at all what he had in the first instance set out to do. In five years’ time he .hoped to go baok to bis original plans and grow plants and rear aniirials.