A MEMORANDUM BOOK.

Auckland Star, Volume XL, Issue 204, 27 August 1909, Page 7

A MEMORANDUM BOOK.

Whatever system of bookkeeping is adopted, a memorandum-book is of the utmost importance. Apart from containing a first record of any commercial transaction or farming it has a separate and distinct use, as supplying a reliable means of comparison between the behaviour of crops under different conditions of growth and cultivation, and over a series of years' valuable conclusions might be arrived at regarding doubtful points of farm practice. Into such a book should be entered a note of everything of interest that takes place on a farm. The date of the ploughing of a paddock, the sowing of a crop, dates of subsequent cultivation and the harvesting, the quantity of seed and manure used, remarks on the weather, and many other details of a similar nature would form a collection of facts from which the farmer could compare the present with past experiences, and it would induce a spirit of observation which in itself is of great usefulness. Not only should every transaction be recorded and dated, but a note should be entered of all moneys received and paid away. It has been remarked that "the most useful of all lessons in agriculture are to be learned by attention to the ordinary operations of cultivation. By keeping a journal of them all as they succeed one another, and by recording his estimate of the effects of each upon the subsequent crops, the farmer will more rapidly mature in agricultural experience, and acquire with greater certainty what degree of foresight is attainable in the practice of farming, than if he should trust his unassisted memory. The habit of closing comparing recorded estimates with ascertained results in the field will soon confer this experience, which, in the more common custom of negligent routine, is only gained in the course of many years, and then only by the more intelligent of those who adopt it." Innumerable methods of bookkeeping have been described and published, but in few qf them is the value of a complete raeinojandtira-book insisted upon. —"Australasian."