CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume II, Issue 91, 2 December 1843, Page 363

CORRESPONDENCE.

To thk Editor or the Nelson Examinir.

Sir — The attention of agriculturists is invited to the advantages which they would derive from the use of lime on ploughed lands, and the facilities which exist of obtaining it, in large quantities, at a moderate price. Limestone, as most of our colonists are aware, is already quarried and burnt in section 42, Suburban South District, 'lhe tenannts of that section (Palmer and Ladd) would, no doubt, contract to raise a large quantity of stone, say 100 tons, and deliver it at the waterside, either burnt or unburnt, as might be required; from whence it might be carried in large boats, at a small expense, to any farms having a water frontage. If parties requiring lime prefer quarrying for themselves, the formation, it is believed, creeps out near the surface in the adjoining sections, numbers 41 and 29. The development of the strata, and the introduction into general use of this valuable element of production in soil, would amply remunerate the proprietor of any section containing it for any quantity which would be removed in the first twelve months. If application were made to the resident Agent of the Company, a shorter road would probably be made along the boundary of sections 43 and 24 to the most available arm of the sea. At present the stone could be carted along a road already laid out, and passable in summer, which intersects and terminates in section number 4, on tb.e coast.

Any individuals who are anxious to obtain a supply of limestone, which they propose to burn (having abundance of wood on their own sections), they have only to communicate with each other and act in concert, to remove the existing impediments to obtaining a certain and sufficient supply, which mainly exist in the want of a sufficient demand to admit of the opening of a large quarry. An Agricultural and Horticultural Society has been formed. The honorary secretary would probably allow any parties desirous of obtaining limestone to address a letter to him, stating the quantities they would require. He would be able to assist them to form a committee of lime consumers, to ascertain the quantity immediately required, on which data they could safely proceed to invite tenders for the supply. Rot the Fern Root.

Parsnips, as Food fob Pigs. — Whilst staying in the Isle of Guernsey for a couple of months in the summer of 1841, I was much pleased with the peculiarly fine flavour of the pork, being sweet, juicy, firm, and beautifully white, at a season of the year when that unclean animal is thought not to be. in the highest perfection. This superiority in flavour and appearance is attributed to the plentiful supply of raw unwashed parsnips with which the animal is fed. In confirmation of a universally-admitted fact, I beg to send you the following extract from a lately-published history of the island and its products :—": — " Hogs prefer raw parsnips to all other roots, and make excellent pork when fed upon them; but the boiling of the root renders the bacon flabby. By this food the animal can be fatted in six weeks. Too much can hardly be said of the beef and pork fatted on parsnips. At this time (July 17th, 1840), there is in the Guernsey market a porker, 22 months old, weighing neat 7501b5. English, which has never eaten anything but raw parsnips and sour milk ; finer meat was never seen. In the use of parsnips one caution is absolutely necessary — they are never to be washed, but to be given as they are taken up from the ground. Used in that way, they are not found to surfeit the hogs and cattle, and to fatten them better and quicker than they otherwise would. If washed, they are apt to satiate, and, as the farmers say, will never thoroughly fatten them. An ox will eat 120lbs. per day, exclusive of hay." — Gardeners' Chron.

The Mississippi. — But what words shall describe the Mississippi, great father of rivers, who (praise be to Heaven) has no young children like him ! An enormous ditch, sometimes two or three miles wide, running liquid mud, six miles an hour : its strong and frothy current choked and obstructed everywhere by huge logs and whole forest trees ; now twining thetnselveß together in great rafts, from the interstices of which a sedgy, lazy foam works up, to float upon the water's top ; now rolling past like monstrous bodies, their tangled roots showing like matted hair ; now glancing singly by like giant leeches; and now writhing round and round in the vortex of 6orne small whirlpool, like wounded snakes. The banks low, the trees dwarfish, the marshea swarming with frogs, the wretched cabins few and far apart, their inmates hollow-checked and pale, the weather very hot, mosquitoes penetrating into every crack and crevice of the boat, mud and slime on everything : nothing pleasant in its aspect, but the harmless lightning which flickers every night upon the dark horizon. For two days we toiled up this foul stream, striking constantly against the floating timber, or stopping to avoid those more dangerous obstacles, the snags, or sawyers, which are the bidden trunks of trees that have their roots below the tide Looking down upon the filthy river after dark, it seemed to be alive with monsters, aa these black masses rolled upon the surface, or came Btarting up again, head first, when the boat, in ploughing her way among a shoal of such obstructions, drove a few among them for the moment under water. Sometimes, the engine stopped during a long interval, and then before her and behind, and gathering dose about her on all sides, were so many of these ill-favoured obstacles that she i was fairly hemmed in ; the centre of a floating | island ; and was constrained to pause until they j parted somewhere, as dark clouds will do before the wind, and opened by degrees a channel out. — Dickens' s American Note*