NOTES AND GLEANINGS.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 286, 1 August 1888, Page 6

NOTES AND GLEANINGS.

The Fbozkn Meat Trade.— Mr Edward Barber (says the Wellington Post) is steadily persevering in his efforts to establish a retail demand in the Home country for New Zealand frozen meat- His London shops have proved a success, bub he has had much prejudice to overcome owing to New Zealand meab having got a bad name through quantities of inferior South American, Australian, and Continental meat being sold as New Zealand. Of course Mr Barber sells only real New Zealand meat, and the demand for this is now steadily on the increase. Mr James Barber is at Home managing the London establishment, and his knowledge of the business and of the colony has proved of great value. By the Arawa Mr Edward Barber sent Home another good practical man in the person of Mr Richard Lett (late Secretary to the Wellington Butohers' Association), who is to devote himself to extending the trade by opening retail shops in the lural districts of England. Mr Barber's enterprise is worthy of every encouragement and praise, and will, we trust, prove as profitable to him as his efforts to popularise New Zealand meat at Home will certainly prove beneficial to the colony. Subsidies to Farmers. —We havt on previous occasions suggested in these columns that much might be done in the interests of scientific agriculture, if our Agricultural and Pastoral Societies could enlist the services of intelligent farmers in making experiments on certain donned I lines, determined on by a committee of any society of this kind. The farmers would only be asked to pio^ide land and labour, the society finding the seed and manures necessary for the experiment. Asahino to colonial governments on this matter, we may state that the French Department ot Agriculture adopted .-ome time ago a system of subsidising farmets who ate willing to set apart a proportion of their ho'dings for experimental purposes. To holder's of these fields of demonstration, as they are termed in Fiance, seed, lime, and chemical manures aie pro\ided gratuitously ; and soil analyses will be j made also without charge to the proprietors of the fields;, all such expenses being defrayed by the administration. A field of demonstration is to be hot under half an acre, nor over two and a half acres ; and it must be easy of access and clo-e to a high load. The owner of a field must engage t i carry on experiments for four years, to cultivate the land well, and to keep account of and report to the Prefect the details and results of experiments. Crops produced will belong to tho proprietors or the occupiers of the fields, except thao samples for analysis, or other educational uses, may be take i without remuneration. Nkw Ze\land Grain Trade in Australia. — Writing to the Tapamti Courier, Mr J. Robertson, late of Lawrence, says :—: — " When I was in Sydney, about this time last year, a grain merchant advei tised New Zealand lonp Tartar oats lor leed. I | called as a purchaser, inspected said oats, 1 and iound them to be worthless rubbish, [ although in bags marked New Zealand. I spoke out very plain, and told him that I had been nearly all my life in New Zealand, but never saw a sample of oats grown like th it. He took me to anooher lot in bags marked feimiLi, that I could zecogni&e as New Zealand grown oats. Now, the conclusions I drew from what I saw here, and by what I learned from otht.r&, were that they used New Zealand as a draw, and palmed off to the unwary all the rubbish they could get at New Zealand price, aud as New Zealand grow n ; and those that bought the worthless rubbish would not deal in New Zealand grain again. You would observe New Zealand oats, New Zealand butter, New Zealand cheese, etc., ticketed up, evidently at an advertisement by vendors whose mte tests were in New South Walos, and who could without doubt push off their products in preieience to New Zealand's, as it >vas only right to slaughter those at a distance. lam told on good authority that it is the same here in the Melbourne market." Utilising the Ratjmt. —In connection with former remarks of ours on the wastefulness of not devising some means of placing the hosts of rabbits we are destroying upon the London market, and thus rendering them ol some commercial value we clip the following fiom an exchange : — Reverting to tho subject of turning the rabbit to an account commercially, ii is instructive to find that the trapping and tinning of rabbits Avas suggested some time ago by a 'cute American who had heard of the plague from which the Australasian colonies were buffering 1 . His cure he put practically in these woids :—": — " Tell the Australians that all they have to do is to put their rabbits into tin cans and sell them as food in the markets of the great cities of the world, just as they are selling beef and mutton." When it was suggested that there would bo many practical difficulties in the way, he went on as follows : — "There is no difficulty about it; jugged hare, potted hare, or whatever you choose to call it, is a luxury and commands a high price ; because it is a luxury and commands a high price the demand for it is limited ; make it abundant) and cheap, and great as the supply i&, it will not meet the demand. I know M'Jiat I'm talking about, as I've been in the business of canning 1 salmon and lobsters. Let the Australians put their rabbits on the market in the shape of canned food, always being sure to sell it at a price that keeps it in the domain of necessity, and does not make a luxury of it. Whenever salmon goes so high that it cos.ts to the consumer moi-e than a Is a pouud the demand falls off immensely. At 13d a pound three fourths at least; ol the sales will stop, as though cut oft with a kniie. Tell them to sell their tinned rabbits for 8d or lOd a pound at retail in London, and in less than ten years all of Australia and New Zealand cannot supply the demand, and there won't bo enough rabbits for seed." Tun Fii(JUM)iTV ok Pios. — An enterprising writer, in a Norwich paper has made some rather startling computations on the subject of pig breeding. He has discovered j that, if permitted, pigs will live from fifteen to twenty years of age ; and they commence breeding when they arc from nine to twelve months old ; and that from one pair only in ton years, allowing only six to a litter, male and female, upwards of 6,434,838 pigs would be > obtained. "This," says the, Mark Lane, Express, "is not reckoning on any out-of-the-way basis, for the gentleman , shows that in Leicestershire one sow actually produced 355 pigs in twenty litters : while ho mentions that at the exhibition of, the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland a boar was shown which, although , only twenty months old, was already thei .father of 1466 pigs. Here, then, is wealth i for the million ; all you have to do is to get, your two pigs at the start offhand then let. them increase and multiply/ While you sleep you will insensibly be becoming- the owner of six million piglets." This, Hedges., — When the \veatlier will not allow the teams to get on to the land, , says a Southern contemporary, , iherej, is

plenty of occupation for the farmer and his helps in attending bo various necessary jobs on the farm ; and one of the first, to be tackled ,is.^edge trimming. If the farmer cannofc keep a man for the purpose, and, cannot ; well spare the cash necessary for getting this work done by contract, he can at least make an effort at this time of the year, and attack[the overgrown hedges when more profitable work cannot be done. There is generally Fome sort of rotation of crops carried out, and each field in its turn comes under the plough. When a field has been down in grass some years and the hedges have been neglected these latter have probably gro'vu pretty large and coarse, and bushes grown from flying seed have perhaps' encroached on the land. Now is the time then when that field is to be ploughed, and to make a special effort to cut the gorse hedges short, grub all the off shoots, and make a clearance by burning off the whole field. By this means the harbour for the sparrows is removed ; the gorse can throw no seed on to the ploughed land, and by grubbing before the plough there is no land left encumbered with gorse plants. By doing a field or two in this way each year the farm hedges, as a whole, cannot get in a very bad state, though there may be one or two bad ca&es awaiting their turn next year.