MUSEUM OF AGRICULTURE.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9323, 25 January 1896, Page 7

MUSEUM OF AGRICULTURE.

The necessity for a small technical Museum of Agriculture is again being urged this year by Mr T. W. Kirk, F.R.M.S., F.L.S., Government Biologist, in his annual report. Mr Kirk says that such a museum is absolutely necessary if the Agriculture Department is to adequately fulfil the purpose for which it was set up. The want of such an adjunct to the office is severely felt* by the experts of all divisions, while its usefulness to settlers would be incalculable. The Department has started to gather suitable collections, and has already acquired considerably more than can be stored. Promises have also been received from many large firms to either present or permanently exhibit, as soon as space is available, all tbe leading agricultural and horticultural appliances, including cultivators, spray-pumps, and dairy, machines and appliauces, «tc.; together with specimens of agricultural seeds as received from the farm, the same after passing through seed-cleaning machine, and samples of tbe refuse extracted by tho

machine; a collection of all agricultural seeds grown in the colony, aud many other valuable exhibits. Tho exhibits would iuclude model farm buildings of all kinds, tools, appliances, machinery, soils (with analysis and brief statement as to best kind of crop adapted to ground), manures; mineral fertilisers, with their qualities explained ; animal and vegetable products, showing method of preparation and manufacture ; collections oi weeds; of scads and •.heir impurities and adulterants ; of insects injurious to man's interests, with specimens of their work ; of insects useful to man, and all classes of things of the kinds mentioned above—information of a most useful and practical kind. It is to be hoped that Mr Kirk's representations to the Government will bear good fruit.

IMPORTATION OF BONE DUST. The importation of bonedust into Now Zealand is now prohibited. The following can bo landed:—Superphosphates, blood manure that has been subjected t6 a heat of 270deg, whole raw bones in sound sacks if taken direct to works and subjected to above heat. The following ara prohibited : — Whole bones digested or boiled, bonedust or crushed bones (either digested or undigested).