Cattle.

Probably the most valuable animal on the farm is the cow, and here again New Zealand is second to no country in the world Before the invention of the freezing process butter could not be carried long distances in good condition, but it is now shipped from New Zealand to England, landed in first-class condition, and commands a good price in the English market.

In pointing out the advantages of our own

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country we can only do so most forcibly by comparison with others. Says Mr. X. A. Willard, A.M., Lecturer at Maine State Agricultural College, in his book on Practical Dairy Husbandry in the United States, after describing the characteristics of a good dairy country: "We have no large and continuous stretch of country like that to which we have referred, where the business would naturally develop itself into a speciality."

An American writer, presenting presumably the most favourable view of the State of Montana, in "Harper's Magazine" of June last, has the following on the sheep and cattle industry in that state, and the contrast it offers to the conditions of life for man and beast in New Zealand in respect of the severity of the climate and the terrible life of isolation that those engaged in the pursuit have to lead, is most marked. Further we shall not comment—the words are those of an American speaking of his own country.

"The reader would not suppose there was cruelty in the mere feeding of cattle on the plains, but let him go to Montana and talk with the people there, and he will shudder at what he hears. The cattle owners, or cow men, are in Wall Street and the South of France, or in Florida in the winter, but their cattle are on the wintry fields where every now and then, say once in four years, half or 8o per cent, or one in three as it happens, starve to death because, of their inability to get at the grass under the snow. Sheep are taken to special winter grounds and watched over. It is a prime country for sheep. They are banded together in herds of 2,000 head and each band is in charge of one solitary lonely forsaken herder, who will surprise his employer if he remain a sane man any great length of time. In the winter the grazing is done in sheltered places especially chosen. On the winter grounds a corral is built and thirty to forty tons of hay are stored there for emergencies when the snow lies thick on the ground. The tendency of the sheep herders to become insane is one of the most unpleasant accompaniments of the business. Since I found insanity terribly common among the pioneers in the plains of Canada, where no sheep are kept, I prefer to leave the incessant bleating of the sheep out and put it down to loneliness."

So much for Montana, which is perhaps rather far North, so we will take a look at the great cattle state of Texas, extending south as far as the Gulf of Mexico. In another American periodical, "Scribner's Magazine" of June, 1892, there is an article on the cattle trails of the prairies, which speaks of Texas as the chief live stock producer in the Western States, and which has 3½ million head of cattle.

It says; "The peculiarly favourable climate page 10 of Texas gave the State almost a monopoly of the business." As we read further we get a glimpse of some of the contingencies this peculiarly-favourable climate is liable to. "At the beginning of the winter of 1871-72, came a storm of sleet putting an icy coat over the sod, and multiplied thousands of cattle and hundreds of horses died of cold and starvation. Some of the carcases were skinned, but the majority were left for food for the wolves. A hundred thousand hides were shipped from three stations after the storm. The winter was severe throughout, and it was estimated that less than 50,000 cattle (out of 3½ millions, fancy that) lived through it. From herds of 60,000 to 70,000 only a few hundred survived. Like other booms in which the West had over-reached itself, this one had its collapse. In 1873 450,000 head of cattle were shipped from Kansas, and then again came a back-set in prices and weather conditions, but not equal to that of two years previous."

In the development of the dairy industry of New Zealand alone, if anywhere in the world, is to use Lord Onslow's words, "an enormous field for investment by small men." The dairy farmer wants he least capital of any class of men that make their living out of the soil, and his returns commerce from the day his operations begin—unlike the fruit grower, who has to wait years, or the wheat grower, who has to wait a season, and his first may be a bad one, his income commences with the calving of his cows, and process if he attends to his business with the regularity of the motion of this planet. For the smalles capitalist—be he but an industrious careful man, as well as for the larger one who can afford to employ and superintend labour—no investment in the world offers so secure an income so steady a return, such room for development for enterprise, as that of a dairy farm in New Zealand.

The exports of butter and cheese from New Zealand were in 1891, £236,933. When it is considered that England imported, in 1891, butter and cheese to the value of £19,964,753, it will be seenat a glance that a better field for expansion was never offered.

For [unclear: inter] feed we grow turnips and mangels. The British farmer has but to transplant himself and farily and go right on with his operations. His prvious experience will not require to be much rodified, except that he ploughs in May and raps in January, there is not much difference, and although he is 16,000 miles away from a market, it is all water carriage at a cheap rate, and it does not cost a tithe of the money to send hi produce that 16,000 miles by water that it does o send it 1,000 miles by rail, if he should be foolish enough to pitch his tent in a continent instead of an island.