Ironworks.

All attempts to successfully establish ironworks have at present failed, and it is to be regretted that the skill and attention displayed upon such a tempting, though impracticable, industry have not been diverted into more useful channels. Bonuses have been offered, and allowed to lapse; and, as there is only one iron furnace at work in the colony, it is not probable page 26 that the bonuses still under offer for pig-iron and wrought-iron blooms—both of which expire on the 31st December, 1886—will be taken up. Hitherto, in the Old World, the near proximity to each other of iron ore and coal seams has been regarded as essential to the success of ironworks, and as the secret of the supremacy which coal and iron countries always attain. Unfortunately, the ironsand on the west coast of the North Island and at the Manukau, which does not possess the advantage of coal as a near neighbour, has been the only field in which experimental ironworks have as yet been ventured upon. Failure has attended all of them. As pointed out in Dr. Hector's report (Parliamentary Paper H.—15a.), one of the most favourable localities for ironworks yet discovered is at Collingwood, in the Nelson District, where coal seams and iron ore have been found almost side by side. Here, if anywhere, the experiment of ironworks to obtain the bonuses ought to have been practically tested—especially as the yield of the coalmine is easy and abundant—yet nothing has been done.