vill INTRODUCTION 
of attention from the Government, either directly or 
indirectly through the University institutions. There 
is a marked tendency to increase the supply of expert 
technical knowledge, founded on the latest develop- 
ments of physical, chemical, and biological researches, 
made available to the farmer by the national funds, and 
rightly so, but there has been a general failure to 
appreciate correctly the practical value of research in 
the economic factors of farming. To the farmer it 
should seem as important to attend to the selection of 
the right type of crop, to analyse relative costs, to com- 
pare marketing and transport methods and_ charges, 
as it is to study manuring and plant-breeding. From the 
point of view of the nation, there is a clear duty to see 
that every industry is functioning so as to co-operate 
with the others in reaching the highest possible degree 
of national welfare. Economic research to attain this 
end was never so much needed as to-day, when a large 
proportion of the lands of the country has passed into 
the hands of purchasers at values greatly inflated by 
expectations that the present good times will continue 
indefinitely, when experts tell us that the world as a 
whole is faced with the spectre of diminishing returns 
in agriculture, and when moral duty summons up every 
effort to rescue millions in the older lands from the 
brink of starvation. While New Zealand has been borne 
along on a constantly rising general level of prices 
of farming products, politicians have rarely recog- 
nised any obligation to analyse the organisation of our 
natural resources and the industries directly founded 
on them; but if, as now seems likely, we are to be faced 
with a continuous fall in the prices of our produce, it 
is essential to well-being that we should know how to 
utilise these resources in the best possible way. Not the 
least useful lesson to be drawn from comprehensive sur- 
veys of an industry like the following is the warning 
written plain in its history that a present wave of 
prosperity, however buoyant it may seem, should not be 
regarded as permanent or even likely to last through 
the experience of an ordinary business life. 
