That sudden and substantial advance in wool values of last year, coming as it did in the depths of an unprecedented depression, served as an arresting reminder of what this industry means to our country's progress and prosperity. Throughout long years of steady advancement, dating back almost to the beginning of things, wool production and its related industries have been largely taken for granted. The clothes we wear, from the heaviest of tweeds to the cosiest of nether garments, the warm blankets and the comfortable rugs, finished products of the wool industry, we have accepted as a rightful inheritance, with little thought and less conception of the genesis of such things. Yet nothing more colourful or absorbing could be written of industry and enterprise, with the exception, perhaps, of gold production and whaling, than that surrounding the history of wool in New Zealand. It is a story of the back-blocks, which, for the purpose of this article, centres in the shearing shed. Advances of time and science have brought their changes, chiefly in improved quality of sheep and wool; means of transit and access to markets have been revolutionised, and machinery has displaced hand labour in many directions; but in all essentials shearing time remains shearing time. Australian writers have found a never failing source of inspiration in the shearing sheds of that country, and heroes of the blade and long-blow have been enshrined in their literature. “McClusky” and “Scotty Mack” were the heroes of fiction, “Jacky Howe” the hero of real life. The reader will doubtless be familiar with those exhibitions at spring shows, where a man in denims, on an elevated platform, leisurely and methodically strips a submissive sheep of its clothing, to demonstrate the advantages of some particular brand of shearing machine. If you have formed a mental picture of the shearing shed from that spectacle, so far removed from its natural setting, it may well be forgotten.