494 Journal of Agricidtiirc. [lo Aug., 1909. 



In creating irrigated agriculture in this State, subdivision and closer 

 settlement are as necessary as water, but subdivision in new districts has 

 a feature of peculiar difficulty. Much of the land is owned by pioneers 

 who do not want to irrigate or change their farming methods. The 

 pioneer is wedded to the methods he understands ; he obiects to either 

 adopt new methods or to sell to those who will, and his feeling in this 

 matter is not modified by the fact that the State is willing to pay a fair 

 price for his land and incur all the risk and expense of securing settlers. 

 It becomes a question, therefore, whether it is better to leave conditions 

 as they now are, thus avoiding the opposition to change, or take the neces- 

 sary steps to bring about a full development. 



There is no half way course, it should be one or the other. It is a 

 situation in which the inclination of the individual runs counter to the 

 welfare of the State. Every economic change creates situations of a 

 similar character. Those of irrigation will be far less serious than those 

 which have been wrought in many industries by new inventions. The 

 only obstacle to irrigation is that its methods are not under.stood and its 

 advantages not realized. Those who make the change will not suffer any 

 enduring hardship. On the contrary, I have the fullest confidence that 

 the land-owners who remain in the proposed new districts will, in a few- 

 years, regard the conditions of life under irrigation as infinitely superior 

 to tho.se they displaced. But whether this should prove true, or not, does 

 not lessen the responsibility of the State to develop its latent resources. 

 Northern Victoria has now reached a stage in its development when 

 agricultural methods must change if there is to be further growth. At 

 present it is retrograding. Schools in the Goulburn Valley long estab- 

 lished have recently been closed for lack of pupils. Sixty farmers left 

 the Rodney district in one month last spring, .selling their farms to their 

 neighbours. The aggregations of small holdings is going on faster than 

 the breaking up of large ones. The price of land has risen without a 

 corresponding increase in the value of products, until, as one man ex- 

 pressed it, " It has got so now that a farmer cannot afford to own land." 

 The potential wealth of Northern Victoria is less now than it was ten years 

 ago because the soil fertilitv is being imjjaired bv wasteful methods of 

 tillage. The extension of irrigation with increase of population and 

 better methods of tillage will change this, but if we are to have success 

 we must work for it. 



TTI8T0RY OF THE BrTTEli EXPORT TRADE. 



A'. Croicc, Siipcriiitoidciii of Exports. 



A report dealing with the first shijDment of Victorian butttM- to England 

 is herewith reproduced. This interesting document, which was recently 

 discovered bv Mr. J. H. Mullalv, Chief Clerk, in one of the Departmental 

 vaults, carries the historv of the l)utter exj)ort trade further back than has 

 lieen hitherto recorded. 



In 1899, I wrote an historical skelch of the Butter Industry in Victoria. 

 In order to .secure data regarding the first shipment of butter, the earliest 

 factory established, and so on, I had access to official reports and records, 

 and to communications from old residents in the various districts. After 



