We do not know whether the an nouncement that fourteen young men in the Wellington district have themselvesintoan association for thepur. pose of taking up a block of land on the co-operative principle is to be regarded as an evidence of a growing love fo r agricultural pursuits among our colonial youth. The young fellows, who are of good social position, and who include in their number a son of Sir Harry Atkinson, may be influenced by no higher motive than a desire to lead a free and easy life unshackled by tbe conventional restrictions which fetter the action of young men devotfd to professional or commercial pursuits in the city j or they may have been led by the cutting and pruning of the Civil Service which has been lately carried on so unsparingly to doubt whether a Government clerkship, held on a very precarious tenure, is the most brilliant Tospect which .*-■ —„. colo*- '_"jers to

active and enterprising young men. It is, however, probable that they are influenced by the opinion that in taking up land " there is money in it," and that their ultimate success in life will be greater as pastoralists or agri culturists than if, like the vast majority of our colonial youths, their sphere should be bounded by the horizon of city life. The Minister of Lands has concluded an arrangement with them by which they take up 600 acres of land at a rental of ,£240, and by way of handing down the Minister's name to posterity, the youthful pioneers have dubbed their newly-acquired possession " The Mc- Kenzie Settlement."

It is interesting to notice the differ ence between the views which aro held respectively in England and New Zea land with regard to the propriety ot young men of good social position de voting their attention to land as a means of carving out success in life. The most ardent wish of all classes in England is to possess land. The city magnate whohasamasseda large fortune does not reach the goal of his desires till he becomes a landed proprietor. The great ambition of the average Englishman is to possess land. This desire springs, no doubt, from mixed motives. 