M.—AGRICULTURE. 245 
The engineer has perhaps been the greatest force in the development 
of New Zealand agriculture. In 1831, the time of our first meeting, the 
only export from New Zealand was a little flax (with an occasional 
preserved human head elaborately tattooed); wool was not exported 
till 1835, and then only from two farms ; there was no organised settlement 
till 1840, when Wellington was founded, and no real movement till 1843, 
when numbers of sheep were brought over from Australia and established 
on the Wairarapa plains near Wellington. Wool rapidly became the chief 
export, followed for a short time after 1870 by wheat, the result of Vogel’s 
development policy, till the invention of refrigeration paved the way for 
the great dairy and lamb industries, which are now among the most 
remarkable and efficient agricultural industries in the world. The inven- 
tion came from Australia; in 1873 James Harrison had been awarded a 
gold medal at the Melbourne Exhibition for his method of freezing meat. 
But the method was not developed till 1879, and then it was not successful. 
The first satisfactory cargo of frozen mutton and lamb came to London 
from New Zealand in 1882 in a sailing ship fitted with refrigeration 
appliances ; ten years later steamers were introduced, and continuous im- 
provements have since been made. On the agricultural side also the industry 
has developed remarkably, and from 1921 onwards it has been the subject 
of a good deal of legislative control, for the New Zealand farmer has 
learned to combine freedom of action in producing with united action in 
grading and marketing, and in consequence he has been able to send over 
here large and regular supplies of uniform high quality, and so to secure 
an enviable position in our markets. He does this at a profit in spite of 
his great distance from our markets, and of having to pay wages much 
higher per man (though not per job) than are paid here; the exports are 
rapidly rising. In 1929 that of butter was valued at £13-2 millions, of 
cheese £7 millions, frozen meat (mutton and lamb) £9-9 millions; in all 
more than £30 millions by refrigeration transport, as against £15 millions 
of wool—a truly remarkable progress. 
The development of the dairy industry, however, was not simply 
a matter of transport: it is a triumph for the bacteriologist, who has 
reduced to an exact science the art of producing clean milk, good butter, 
and cheese true to type. In this country good work has been done at 
the Dairy Research Institute at Reading by Stenhouse Williams, Golding 
and their colleagues. 
Australia has recently made great progress with the dairy industry, 
and is now going into the question of lamb. Canada has a highly developed 
dairy industry. These new developments require compact units, and 
therefore intensive farming. The natural herbage, supplemented where 
necessary by mineral licks, had sufficed so long as wool and low-grade 
beef alone were produced, but with intensification came the necessity for 
improving the grazing lands. Treatment with phosphate, which Wrightson, 
Somerville, Gilchrist and others had shown to do so much for British 
pastures, proved equally effective in New Zealand, the enclosed paddocks 
of Australia and parts of South Africa; indeed, few results are more 
striking than those obtained with phosphate on almost any crop in these 
countries. These problems are now being studied by Orr and the staff of 
the Rowett Institute. In the moister areas the striking results obtained 
