FARM AND DAIRY.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 September 1917, Page 7

FARM AND DAIRY.

SHEEP IN AMERICA.' '"With a population of one hundred million people, who, according to Government statistics, consume more meat per capita than any other nation in the world, and wlith Jess than 50,000,000 sheep, growing only one-half of the' wool required to clothe these people," writes the American Sheep Breeder, the United States is up against a grave problem. Thinking people., everywhere are raising the question of ftn adequate sheep supply. For six months trade organisations, commercial associations, bankers, legislators, State officials, agricultural colleges, wool dealers, manufacturers, and others, have held meetings to discuss this subject, which has so much to do with the all-important question of preparedness. How to rebuild on enduring foundations the sheep industry so vital to the nation's life is a problem that no Mnall mind can grasp. The east and south are poverty stricken for wool and mutton. In States where sheep were plentiful farmers by the thousand have turned their backs on the golden hooF. To-day the west supplies the bulk of wool and mutton. Not many years ago ft million farmers and ranchmen kept sheep. To-day far less Jthan 600,009 raise sheep." •POSSIBILITIES OF AN ACRE. Does anyone know the possibilities of an acre of land ? Has an aero of -soil, like the machine, its limitations. Who is ready to say how many tons of hay or bushels of grain an acre can produce? So far, we do not know of anyone who has been able to make the acre work to the limit of its powers or to fathom its hidden possibilities. There is bound up in a lump of soil much history and many mysteries of the world, much of which man has never been able to unfold. Too many farmers have treated their soil as though it were a dead instead of a, Jiving thing; as though it uvere uninteresting and not full oil charm and fascination. In tho book entitled "Letters of an Old Farmer to His Son," we c.tme across these paragraphs:—"That's what I like in the soil, though we've been working with it through unnumbered thousands of years, no man since the beginning has ever found the limitations of a single square rod. In. the very pature of things, no man will ever discover the utmost end of the soil's power when to its own fertility he adds a fertil mind." Yes, it is the trained mind that comprehends the charm' and wonders of the land; it is the fertile brain that looks forward to the possibilities of tho soil and can see itj .powers strengthen as the comprehension of man broadens. We quote again from this book:— "An acre of land is pretty much like the heart of a good friend. It is an everlasting challenge to you to show the best that's in you; it's an everlasting institution to you to do With it what you will and to take from it as you"newt: and there's the everlasting certainty that it holds great treasures always in I reserve f<jr you. He must be a man of little understanding who will dare to say that he has exhausted all knowledge of the potent secrets of the merest handful of earth." If every person who turns up the furrows of the fields could Bee in the soil a responsive, living subStance, ever ready to to the touch of man, there would be a different attitude towards its treatment. There w-ould be more who would test its possibilities and strengthen its powers.