148 Transactions. — MisceUaneoiis, 



In addition to this tiiere were the leaves for the cattle to feed upon. 

 In that year there were over 100,000 hands engaged in the sugar factories, 

 and over 26,000 in the beet-distilleries ; lands leased by the farmers to grow 

 the beetroots averaged 200 francs per hectare — over £3 per acre English. 



The growers of the beetroot consider that it thrives best in a temperate 

 climate, with sufficient but not too great moisture, a moderate amount of 

 Bun but not too much heat ; as all the root should grow under ground to 

 contain the largest amount of sugar, in a soil not too dry or too hard, it 

 follows that this climate would admirably suit it. 



Wherever it has been once fairly tried it is never given up, but always 

 increases. The labourers' wages rise, the farmer gets richer, the manu- 

 facturer becomes wealthy. The money that would have gone out of those 

 countries for cane-sugar is now kept in, and not wasted for what they can 

 themselves produce ; and are we to be more reckless and wasteful than they, 

 and send our thousands, every year, out of the colony for what we can pro- 

 duce so well here ; are our commercial men such incapables that they will 

 allow this wealth to slip past them without inauguratuig an industry that 

 would benefit them, and all concerned ; are our farmers so obtuse that what 

 a Frenchman, a German, a Swede, a Eussian, a Hollander, an Austrian, a 

 Pole can do, and improve his farm with, and have a constant and steady 

 income therefrom, they cannot perform ; are they so much behind the 

 other nations, that they cannot or will not adapt themselves to a new 

 culture that is no more difficult than the old, and that is in no way 

 speculative, as most other nations have seized upon it, and are always going 

 more fully into it, finding it so profitable and worthy of attention ? Surely 

 the men who have made New Zealand their home, and have settled upon 

 these fertile lands, and where the climate is so suitable to the beet culture 

 that it developes more sugar than in other places, will not much longer 

 refrain from this magnificent industry, that will make them, and their 

 families, well off, and render them more prosperous each year — enabling 

 them to employ more labour, more machinery, and to more highly cultivate 

 and always keep improving their farms and making their lands more valu- 

 able — while they are establishing an industry that will make them more 

 independent of corn and meat-growing each year, but will enable them, if 

 they choose, to grow more wheat and meat to the acre than they can now 

 possibly do, by reason of the improvements that beet culture would effect in 

 the tillage and improvement of these lands ; while ihey will be keeping the 

 money in the country that is now being sent out in hundreds of thousands 

 to purchase the sugar and spirits that are now draining the money out of 

 the colony. 



