AGRICULTURAL.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 114, 14 April 1870, Page 7

AGRICULTURAL.

A compost in the hill of lime, ashes, and salt, inakesj jiotato-vines stiff and tall. This prevents the rot. Neither hens, hogs, nor human

beings do well on xinchanging diet ; they cannot live by bread alone.

Twelve years' experience and trial of various breeds convinced an excellent dairy farmer that the best breed for milk is the Ayrshire.

To substitute a valuable for a poor grass is of as great importance as to root out weeds. A character is made as useless by a feeble virtue as by vice.

Carbolic acid is just now the favourite disinfectant. Mixed with lime it makes what chemists call a cream — this is death to all bad odours.

In raising the com crops, the plough should bo used after planting. Erequent light stirrings on the surface are found best.

Three Definitions : To mulch a soil is to cover with some vegetable refuse ; to manure is to blend with the soil substances rich in plant food ; to cultivate is to stir often and root out weeds.

Grood farming is thus defined: It consists in producing as great quantities as possible of vegetables that do not exhaust the soil, and selling them in an animal rather than a vegetable form.

A brick windinill, having six floors and a tower sixty feet high, is about to be erected at Timaru, Canterbury.

The acclimatisation of the hare has been most successful in Victoria, as these animals are now to be seen in various parts of the colony, miles away from where they were originally turned out.

It is painful to look on our hills and valleys in the county of Cumberland, the metropolitan district of the colony, and to see the pastures and fields covered with thin, scanty crops, where, twenty or thirty years ago, rich harvests were gathered, our farmers now purchasing their flour from the importers, and paying freight over a distance of thousands of miles, with commissions and merchants' profits, while at the same time we are continually saluted with complaints that "farming does not pay." But there must be something wrong. No particle of matter has been destroyed since the globe first commenced its journey round ths sun ; but the articles of manurial matter that go to make crops have become most sadly displaced on most of the farms. The same good atmosphere still encloses the earth that was enjoyed by our fathers, abounding in 90 pci v cent, or more plant-forming material. So that there seems to be no lack, only the skill to compound and put them together. We are not believers in the immediate ushering in of the agricultural millenium, seeing there are only a few farmers who learn anything in relation to their calling, we mean of those who have made farming a life pursuit. Farmers in New South; Wales are now in about the same situation that those of England were 100. years ago. Their wheat crops then averaged about 13 bushels per acre. But since that period they have applied brains to their soil, and the crop of wheat has risen to nearly 30 bushels, throughout the kingdom, thought the soil has. become 100 years older. Without progress agriculture cannot flourish, no more will the mechanical and mercantile pursuits. In conversation the other day with a merchant, he remarked that he had no fancy for farming. We said to him, " Sir, if they stop farming your business will soon come to a stand-still, for you will not have anything to trade upon." He denied that it would be so not knowing that agriculture is the chief corner-stone of a nation's greatness — the main foundation of human civilisation. — "Australian Town and Country Journal."

Ceueltt to 'Fajs Animals. — The " Chamber of Agricultural Journal " has the following remarks on this subject : — The tricks and dodges that are resorted to for reducing unfortunate fatting wethers within the 2001 b. limit are not very commonly known. The animals are walked; they are sweated, and tell it not to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, they are starved! "We believe that one pen of: sheep which took a prke in- the Agricultural Hall lately were kept for forty-eight hours without food, and, by this ingenious development in the art of preparing show animals, just came under the official limit on the weighing machine ; while a pen of sheep of another exhibitor who was not so clever (and, shall we add, not so cruel ?) was disqualified because one of the three animals weighed 2011 b. We need not add another word to> show the absurdity and uselessness of the restriction.

The wheat growers of California complain of 1 the want of sufficient vessels to export their produce. There are now 10,000 tons of wheat in store on the banks of Tuolumne B-iver in Stanislaus County, 'and more than 5000- tons in Napa County, awaiting shipment. Farmers who refused in the. early part of the season to, accept $2 a bushel for wheat, would now be glad of an, offer of $I*so per bushel.