AGRICULTURAL.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1081, 10 March 1883, Page 1

AGRICULTURAL.

Wheat which Ins been carted when rather damp will improve by remaining in the straw for o couple of months, whereas it threshed at once it will be very likely to heat in the bag, and then no good flour can be made ont of it. It will be remembered how a French phys ; oligisf, some 30 years ago, succeeded in ennobling the wild grass by cultivation until it became veritable wheat, though of a low quality. Mr Graat Allan, in Macmillan's Magazine, now (races the pedigree of wheat far beyond that, and declares that by evolution our bread-corn has descended from no less unlikely a plant than a lily. A correspondent to an English paper writes : " I have only had experience of King's carbolic dressing for grain. It makes the whole field smell strongly of carbolic acid, aud very few birds come near it. A friend of mine, however, shot some rooks th.it were picking in a field of newly sown wheat that had been dressed with this preparation, and found no wheat in their crops—insects only, He then went to a field newly-sown with wheat that had not been dressed, shot some rooks on it, and found their crops full of wheat. As to smut, I believe it depends upon the season, like mildew in turnips. I never could believe that anything applied to a grain of wheat in the autumn of one year would prevent smut coming on the ears of corn produced from that grain the following summer. Salt for sheep is most invaluable. Very many years ago I found one of my sheep resigned to die. If allowed its Hb3rty it went and lay down in a ditch quietly to die apparently. I was young then, and was told by older and wiser men (?) that I could do nothing for this sheep. I resolved to try, and had it placed in a pen, 1 tried it with all manner of dainty food to no purpose. At length I offered it salt. Of this it partook greedily, and in three or four months was fat and well, and sold to a butcher,—Scribbler.