AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Patea Mail, 5 April 1881, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

The value of. animals in Ireland — cattle, horses, &c.—has recently been estimated at over £60,000,000. The Irish harvest this year is described as the best known for more than a generation. Temper in animals is hereditary as well as in man ; it is not desirable to breed from a vicious sire. Foot and mouth disease, according to papers by the San Francisco mail, continues to spread in England, but in some of the old districts it seems to be slowly dying out. Russia the past year imported grain, tallow, and wool, the very things with which she has been accustomed to supply half the world. Pleuro-pneumonia has broken out in the Preston and Cleckheaton districts, Lancashire. The- subscriptions received up to the latter end of January in aid of the fund for the benefit of the widow of the late Mr J. J. Mechi amounted to over £2OOO. A cow should be as well fed when dry as when giving milk. She should now increase in flesh, so that she may be able to give a greater flow of milk when milking time comes. To feed a dry cow on poor hay, or even think that straw is good enough is poor policy, and ihe loss will show itself in the milk pail. Feed the cows well all the time. An extraordinary pig has been fed by Joseph Rutherford, Lurdinshaws, Rothbury, England. When killed it was found to weigh 42st 51b, aged twelve months. On a Scotch farm, last year, one bushej of wheat per acre was drilled in. The yield was 56 bushels per acre over the whole of the field. The cause of this heavy return was, steam cultivation to a depth of 18in, and using as seed Hallet’s pedigree wheat. The Great Eastern steamship has been definitely chartered for ten years to carry dead meat to the United Kingdom from the American seaboard or the River Plate. It Is calculated that from Texas or the Argentine Provinces beef of prime quality can be laid down in England at 3d per lb. “Portable grist mills for the use of farmers are now common in America and England, and yet not one is to be seen at Melbourne Exhibition,” complains the Leader ; and adds : “ By the use of these mills (which can be either steam, horse or hand power) the farmer can be his own miller.”

The Royal Agricultural Society of England has decided to offer a gold and and silver medal for the sheaf-binding machines which, after a trial during the harvest of 1881, the judges consider the best and second best, the binding material to be other than wire.