Touring the Waikato.

The first day's journey (Saturday, 27th October) beginning at Auckland and ending at Rotorua, was planned with a view to demonstrating the value and interest of the great Waikato Valley and plains. The run up along the bank of the willow-fringed Waikato, with the background of blue hills, was a pleasant introduction to the plains of plenty which began to open out when the storied peak of Taupiri had been passed. After breakfast at Frankton the travellers were taken over the great butter box factory and casein manufactory of the largest dairy company in the world, the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Co., Ltd. Later on in the day, on the Matamata Plain, they were taken over the same company's Waharoa butter factory, a wonderful place in its dimensions and its output of butter for the English market. The truly huge scale on which the butter-fat of these wide countrysides of “the Empire's Dairy Farm” is turned to account in the various works inspected was a real revelation to most of the visitors. They had not expected anything like it, and they came away with an added reverence for Queen Cow as a wealth-bringer.

The Ruakura State Farm of Instruction was another establishment visited. There the visitors were shown some of the most scientific methods of dealing with the land, the most approved system of crop production and pasture management, and the raising, feeding and housing of live stock.

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At luncheon in Hamilton as guests of the Borough Council and Chamber of Commerce, a happy note of optimism was sounded, an all-round expression of hope that this bringing together of business men and farmers and other producers would prove of great mutual benefit to town and country. The Mayor of the town, Mr. J. R. Fow, spoke of the delight it gave the people of Hamilton to be able to meet so many prominent men from the city, and he spoke of the room for development of production throughout the Waikato. Mr. F. H. Clapham, president of the local Chamber of Commerce, joined with the Mayor in expressions of welcome, and congratulated the Railway Department on its very excellent innovation, which he hoped was only the forerunner of many other commerce trains.

The president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, Mr. H. T. Merritt, made the first of a long series of speeches which it fell to him to deliver on the nine days' tour. He said the business men of Auckland felt that the country so frequently visited the town that it was high time the town visited the country. “So many of us,” he said, “have only vague ideas of the conditions of farming, especially in the outlying districts, that we are anxious to see them for ourselves, with a view to letting the farming community know the commercial people of Auckland are keenly interested in their problems and difficulties, but above all in their prosperity. We are keenly conscious that the farmers' interests are the interests of the city, that the farmers' prosperity is the city's prosperity. We would like the farming community to know that we are not quite so terrible as we are perhaps made out.” Mr. Merritt went on to praise the Railway Department, which was keenly alive to the development of the province. He could not, he said, speak too highly of the manner in which the Railway heads had interested themselves in the present tour.