Hill. — Technical and Scientific Training. 159 



That valuable issue of the Registrar-General, the " Official 

 Year-book," contains statistics that are worth putting on re- 

 cord here as showing what has been clone and is being done 

 in the country as the outcome of scientific discovery in rela- 

 tion to the carriage of foods of a perishable nature. Just 

 twenty years ago the first shipment of frozen meat to Eng- 

 land was made, and 15,244 cwt. of mutton, valued at £19,339, 

 were sent away from New Zealand. Since then the export 

 business of frozen meats has grown by leaps and bounds ; but 

 butter and cheese have been added to the list of exports, and 

 it would be difficult to suggest what new products will be 

 added to the list of articles that it will be possible to send 

 away during the coming twenty years. Science is. in fact, 

 becoming the handmaid of all production, and it will come to 

 be realised as education advances that all forms of industrial 

 progress are based upon the science of observation. Curiously, 

 it began in the discovery of means for the more rapid utilisa- 

 tion of raw products ; but so great has become the power of 

 utilisation that science has now come to the help of producers 

 by showing them along what lines they must go, and suggest- 

 ing to them how their more perishable goods may be pre- 

 served and conveyed from place to place and from country 

 to country without loss or injury. Last year the exports of 

 frozen meats from this country, including mutton, lamb, kid- 

 neys, beef, pork, veal, rabbits, hares, poultry, and fish, reached 

 1,868,100 cwt., or 396,037,2001b. avoirdupois, and valued at 

 £2,264,120; whilst the butter and cheese sent away under 

 similar conditions reached 305,885 cwt., or 64,847,6201b., 

 and valued at £1,121,091, or nearly half the value of the total 

 meat export. Here, then, we have facts of great importance 

 to this country in relation to its industrial, social, and com- 

 mercial conditions. In twenty years, by the direct aid of 

 science, new exports have become possible amounting to a 

 total of £3,385,211 a year, or to more than 26|- per cent, of our 

 total exports. If this result is not sufficient to show Parlia- 

 ment and those who are engaged in industrial or commercial 

 pursuits the vast possibilities that science opens out in the 

 way of assisting the material well-being of the people, it will 

 be difficult to suggest a course that is likely to impress them 

 more. 



But is the country alive to the importance of scientific 

 instruction as an instrument of production ? for I take it that 

 every scientific discovery that leads to the utilisation of the 

 products of the land is an instrument of production from 

 which common benefits spring. Let us see. The Farmers' 

 Union, representing, I believe, the farming interests of the 

 colony, have lately been in conference, and the results of their 

 deliberations as they appear in yesterday's telegrams (8th 



