AGRICULTURE IN JAPAN.

Waipukurau Press, Issue 296, 15 August 1908, Page 6

AGRICULTURE IN JAPAN.

•For half a century Japan has been studying and assimilating the best to be found in the world. Japan is a world’s university for instruction in the art of agriculture. Her national gieatness is not merely built upon that ; it grows out of that as the grain itself springs from the soil. Of her 45,000,000 people 30,000,000 are farmers. The whole body is supported by a cultivated area of but 19,0'00 square miles. Every foot of .soil is utilised ; the farmer is a specialist. For 25 centuries this people has turned to tillage as the basis industry of life, tier progress is in the right direction —growth, like that of the tree, from the ground up. The message of the victorious guns of Japan is a reminder of the fixed order and proportion in a healthy national development of industry. No nation that does not throw its intensest interest and expend the bulk of its forces upon the cultivation of the soil can become or remain permanently great.

A HOME-MADE CALF-FEEDER Rf Many dairy farmers (says a practical dairyman in the “Country Gentleman ”) experience tronbl e in trying to feed skim-milk t young calves. The calves are° botln red with the “ scours ” and it seems haid to overcome the tendency which is caused by indigestion. Anything that we can do to

mprove the digestion, therefore, will help to overcome the “ scours.” When a calf drinks milk from a pail, it takes it as fast as it possibly can, each time seeming more eager to outdo its former record, and to get it down with the fewest possible swallows. The natural way for calves to take their milk is to suck it from their mothers and get it slowly, which gives it a chance to become mixed with the juice in the mouth. A calf-feeder removes the cause, and the calves have little trouble with the scours. As it is but a few minutes’ work to make one of them, and as they really lighten the work in feeding and weaning young calves, they are worth a trial. The material necessary is a board, saw, brace and bit, or auger, and a. large nipple. The nipple may be purchased at any chemist’s for a few pence. A lamb or calf nipple should be asked for, or one is apt to come home with a baby nipple. Any fairly thia board will answer the purpose.. It should be cut in a circular piece so that it will easily slide up and down in the pail from which the calf is to be fed. Its diameter may be an inch or two shorter than that of the pail. A hole large enough to receive the nipple should be cut in the centre of this piece, and in this the nipple securely fastened. This done, the calf-feeder is complete, and is more satisfactory than the expensive complicated ones.