AUSTRALIAN WHEAT FOR THE PARIS EXHIBITION.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1084, 19 December 1877, Page 3

AUSTRALIAN WHEAT FOR THE PARIS EXHIBITION.

[From the " Sydney Morning Herald," November 19th] The commissioners for the Paris Exhibition aro taking active steps to get together with as little delay as possible a good collection of the natural products of New South Wales. The commissioners to whom has been deputed the task of arranging for the display of cereals have, through their secretary, issued a circular letter to the agriculturists of the colony, asking them to contribute a bushel of wheat, maize, oats, barley, or other cereal, and it is to be hoped that this appeal will meet with better response than have former similar requests. At no international exhibition which has yet been held has there been anything like a full or satisfactory display of farm produce, and former exhibitions, as far as New South Wales is concerned, have done little to remove the popular impression in old world communities that Australia is little better than a sterile waßte—a sort of worked-out goldfield or sheep walk. Australian wheat does, no doubt, fetch the highest price in the English market; but while it is well known to the dealers in grain, it has not been imported into Great Britain in sufficient quantities to remove the popular ignorance on the subject to which we refer. The wheat shown by South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria at Philadelphia last year was one of the best features of the Australian exhibition, and, taken in connection with the maize from New South Wales, was calculated to create the impression of great agricultural resources and exuberant fertility. Some of the officers of the department of agriculture at Washington were astonished at the plumpness and weight of the Australian wheat, and concluded that it would be of great national importance if seed wheat could be obtained here, it being found that constant cropping on the same soils had decidedly deteriorated the quality of the American grain. By the last mail steamer from America, Toronto seedsman who obtained and cultivated some samples of Australian wheat from the Exhibition at Philadelphia, wrote to the secretary of the late Philadelphia Commission with a view to purchase a quantity of the same variety of wheat. If a correspondence could be properly established between the seedsmen of Australia and those of the United States, it is extremely probable that a large demand would be developed for Australian wheat for seed purposes. It cannot be doubted that a good show of wheat, maize, and other cereals at Paris would greatly benefit New South Wales, and the agriculturists would indirectly, if not directly, participate in the advantages which might be expected to result. Many of our cultivators have received a substantial boon from the State in the shape of cheap land with long credit, and it would not involve a very great amount of self-sacrifice for them to comply with the commissioners' invitation, and send in a bushel of wheat or maize as the case may be.