Then there is the great sugar question. Government is always offering divers incentives to new industries. It has offered a bonus of L500 to whomsoever produces the first fifty tons of beet-root sugar in New Zealand. That is, over and above what the sugar may fetch in the market. We say, why should not we go in for it? So many acres of beet, a crushing mill, a few coppers and some tubs, and there you are! Wealth, my boy! Wealth! But O'Gaygun has misgivings. "This is not a whate-growin' counthry," he declares. It is far too rough and hilly. There are too many difficulties in the way. You can grow wheat to a certain extent, of course. The North can produce enough for its own consumption, and more. It will pay as one among other operations and productions. But we must not think of it as our principal or staple industry. And then as to sugar. You must have a couple of hundred acres of beet at least, to begin with. A mill and appliances that are to be of real use would cost L2000 or so. Your bonus would be but a small thing if you got it. If all the farmers in the district were to combine to grow beet-root on every acre they could plough, and nothing else, even then it would hardly pay the sugar-mills, or possibly the farmers either. Stick to cattle and sheep, to pigs and potatoes, "Ontil ye're able to give ye're attintion to fruit. Fruit! Whativver ye can do wid it, that's what this counthry's made for! Wine! an' ile! an' raisins! an'----" "Oh, shut up, O'Gaygun! Get out, you miserable misanthrope!" Nevertheless, I think our Irish chum was about right in what he said, after all, especially in the last part of his remarks. Dandy Jack had been training horses, and Old Colonial had been gentling bullocks; so we had a choice of draggers for the plough. We ploughed in those fifty acres, fenced them round, and put in potatoes for a cleaning crop, to thoroughly break up the old turf. We hope to get two crops in the year. The second will be maize and pumpkins. Then, next year, wheat. The new-ploughed land is surveyed with rapture by us; but it is something different from an English field, after all. The ground was so irregular and rough; our beasts were not too easy to manage; and then--but this is unimportant--it was our first essay at ploughing. The furrows are not exactly straight, and there is a queer, shaggy look about them. But the potatoes are in, and a crop we shall have, no doubt about it. What more can possibly be needed? I have mentioned that we have several enclosures that may be termed gardens. So we have, and what they produce fully bears out O'Gaygun's opinion, as to this being essentially a fruit country. Of course our spade industry gives us all the vegetables we require, when we lay ourselves out for it. The worst of growing anything except roots is the immense amount of weeding required; the weeds spring in no time; and they are of such a savage sort in this fertile land.