Beer.

New Zealand brewed beer appears at length to be driving the imported article out of the market, as the quantity imported in 1885 was valued at £102,229, while in 1888 it had decreased in value to £47,852; and the decreasing amount imported, from the excellence of that of native manufacture, promises to increase in proportion to the care employed in our own breweries. Brewing would appear to be one of the oldest of our industries, as Polack writes: "In 1835 we introduced the first foreign manufacture in New Zealand—viz., a brewery as a preventative to the rapid spread of deleterious spirits that were consumed less probably from taste than from the want of an invigorating substitute." He goes on to state how a house was erected for the purpose at Kororareka, how hops were imported from Sydney and a brewer from Tasmania; that the water was well adapted for brewing, and "the natives after some little practice in quaffing, soon began to relish it, and baskets of potatoes, packages of fish, etc., soon found conveyance to the brewery in exchange for Pierian draughts of New Zealand beer. That Northern beer continues to please the public is plain, as Messrs. Brown and Campbell's beer stood distinguished for its merits at the Exhibition in Melbourne in the year 1888.