THE DAIRY SHORTHORN.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 587, 23 July 1913, Page 3

THE DAIRY SHORTHORN.

The milking Shorthorn is an elusive animal. Certainly when a Shorthorn dairy cow is good she is particularly good. She gives a great bulk of milk arid more often than not it tests well. New Zealand has imported quite a number of Shorthorn cattle of supposed dairy strain; but they have invariably proved a disappointment. We now have some Australian Shorthorns bred to a dairy type, introduced by the department and which promise to give a good account ot' themselves. A field which promises to give us something better in this line than anything we have yet secured is that of Ireland. A considerable meat trade exists between Ireland and England and therefore the Shorthorn is the popular dairying cow. Now with herd-test-ing work in full swing throughout Ireland as a result of the libera! assistance afforded the industry by the local Department of Agriculture a great campaign of improvement in dairy character has set in. It is claimed that the production capacity of the Irish Shorthorn will be doubled in the process and this without impairing its beefing qualities. There are already some Shorthorn herds in Ireland which are reputed to possess exceptional milking quality; but a man would require to have a very long purße indeed to secure the possession of any females from them.

LIFE IN SOIL,

The soil of a farm is not simply an inert mass of material containing certain mineral substances which plants utilise. It is full of living organisms. Besides the numerous insects, worms, etc., it contains myriads of low organisms, not visible to the naked eye, but capable of examination by the aid of the microscope. They are known as bacteria or micro-organisms, and are so minute that a gram of soil may contain many thousands, increasing and propagating under favourable conditions with incredible rapidity. They exist in soils chiefly in the upper layer; a pinch of soil may contain from several thousands to several millions; loamy soils and soils containing much organic matter contain most,sandy oil contain least. The number decreases gradually from the surface soil downwards till about 3ft, where few or none are present. Each kind different of bacterium performs its own useful purpose in nature, but in the interest of economical cultivation it would appear that the growth of some of them have to be encouraged and the development of others to be checked. The subject, however, is not at present clearly understood, and has to be further investigated by scientific men; for us the practical knowledge is that organic matter, increasing the supply of humus to the soil, has been proved to favour the rapid growth of the kind of bacteria which convert organic ammonia into nitrates, suitable for assimilation by the crops. We have, therefore, to see that we keep up in the soil by application of farmyard manure, the ploughing under of green crops and other suitable means, a sufficient supply of humus.