It is a good many years since the writer first went fiver the block of land on which the present State experimental farm, known as "Waerenga," is situated. At that time it was a tract of land of some two or three thousand acres near Rangariri, on the Waikato railway line, which, like a large area of the surrounding country, looked quite hopeless as a field for settlement. Ever since its confiscation from the Natives, as a result of the Waikato war, the country for many miles beyond the Whangomarino River had lain practically waste and unoccupied. As seen from the railway, it has an expanse of poor clay lulls, interspersed with a succession of miserable-looking rush swamps. The "Meremere hills" were, to all travellers to the Waikato, a synonym for all that was barren, poor and useless in the shape of land.