Farm Notes

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVII, Issue 43336, 11 June 1908, Page 1

Farm Notes

, Recently Sir ft. Stout mentioned to Ml ‘ interviewer ? that the d&nthonia andpaapalumdilatatum, which were •riellpnt pasture for sheep and cattle. respectively, were doing very well ; inythe, North. He spoke with • great rehthulriasm of the. quality of the Irilit grown at the new Government ttation established two . years ago at Taurajnga, .two miles out of the town. The produce, lemons, peaches, apricots, jßgs, apples, and pears, was timply marvellous, the vegetables, too, were magnificent; in fact, he J»»d never seen finer. The station was very valuable in showing what the count icy could do. Questioned as to the condition of the natives as regard food supplies, Sir Robert said they appeared to be fairly well off; of course, the potato blight had been rather bad injsome parts, but there £ were jkumeras to. take ’ their place, and * ' in soipe districts the maize crop had be# Very successful Th(» humble flax plant is an asset of increasing virtue to New Zealand. Tflfe ekport of phormium fibre during

1908'g was ; valued at £776,106, as , ngai!#;;;: £195,728 for 1901 and T fpr i 896. New Zealand phormiutn at present, however, is far from, being a perfect plant for flaxmilling , purposes. It is, in fact, probably the only example of a wild

plan t used commercially on a large . scale, neglected phormium tenax to be taken in hand, and ® r * F.L.S., will in a ! iew visit the Govern- , ment experimental stations in the

Auckland- province, in connection with a series of experiments whose object is the production of forms of flax of a higher economic value than any now existing. At the present time, Dr. Cockayne states, nothing is accurately known about f the varieties of phornium ; in fact, the extremely

important’ point as to whether the wellrmarktd varieties come tnie from Seed is quite unsettled. Experiments > - will also be conducted in regard to j the action of d efinite soils upon fibre-1

production and the like, and Dr. Cockayne hopes to publish in the spring an up*to-date account of pborium tenaxy dealing with its wild and cultivated varieties and its variatiftns under natural conditions.