Distinguished Work.

Many of you older girls and boys will have heard something about the valuable experimental work being done at the Cawthron Institute in Nelson by some of our leading scientists. They have been the means of making previously useless lands profitable, and doing away with tree and fruit diseases by treating them with certain chemicals, or by introducing insects from other lands to attack the pests.

In many country fields are little flags and tags marking out the soils on which they are experimenting.

The Cawthron Institute, which is set on a hill, is used mainly as a hospital for helping Mother Nature in the care of her sick and sometimes unruly offspring.

By the way, Thomas Cawthron, the founder of the Institute, who earned his thousands of pounds in New Zealand and gave most of it back again for the good of New Zealand, arrived in this land as a frail youth with scarcely a penny to his name.

At present, in the “bug house” of the Institute, they are carrying out experiments with a foreign insect and hoping that it will be the means of wiping out the earwig pest. Living in a few small bamboo canes, in a case, they have over 7,000 earwigs for the experiments.

It is fascinating to watch minute insects and their habits under a microscope.

The exhibition room is a miniature museum. In it there are two pieces of old china valued at £1,000, dainty dresden teasets, cases of gorgeous butterflies, and many strange looking growths bottled up.

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