NOTES.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXI, Issue 1041, 6 July 1894, Page 3

NOTES.

The Victorian Trade Commissioners who are travelling in the East report that a large trade may be opened up with British JBurmah in meat, hams, bacon, butter and cheese. They arp also of opinion that Singapore offers a good market for meat and butter. It is too seldom recognised that a pasture needs an occasional top-dressing of manure, either artificial, farmyard, or other manure. On every farm there ought to be a compost heap for the benefit of the grass. This may be composed of refuse of all kinds, such as ditch cl Ran ings, road scrapings, <fee. It should be mixed with line, and turned over occasionally. A Sydney cable message states that Mr Valentin?) the New Zealand Dairy Commissioner, had an interview with the Premier, when the latter stated that the Government, recognising that the interests of all colonial producers were indentical, especially in dairy-pro-duce, when it reached the market, had decided to ask him (Mr Valentine) to act in a similar capacity for New South Wales in England. The English agricultural returns give the surprising information that, so far from being a mere collection of houses, crowded closely together, the great city of London is a good deal of an agricultural community. For it has no less than 800 acres' of grain craps, 2840 acres of green crops, mainly -vegetables ; 400 of clover, 10,182 of permanant grass land, 332 of small fruit farms, and 360 acres of bare summer fallow. There are also kept within the limits of this city 17,500 head of farm stock, including horses, cattle, sheep and swine, j Fewer merinos are being bred this year than for some time before, and from all accounts the first-cross sheep are filling their places remarkably well. On many of the.runs in Southland, even about the high lake country, the bulk of the sheep are cressbreds, and they are giving much more satisfactory results than the merinos. The great difference in the value of merino and crossbred sheep at the present time has made a vast change in the management of our runs necessary. Wherever crossbred ahrpp can Un kept, they must be kept to make runs pay. A flock of dry merino sheep will now hardly pay expenses, and country might almost as well be abandoned as used for grazing merino wethers. The ' wheat-king' of the world belongs to Argentina. . He is an Italian immigrant named Gimzone, and his broad acres are situated in the south of the province of Buenos Ay res. His crop of last season occupied an area of 66,720 acres, which is a trifle in excess of 100 square miles, and does not fall

■— HUM I iiWm— »niMii^Miiii»nanL j-Uni «i m i — i» :m/ — - ** " " ' ' V far short of the area of the Wels country of Flint or of the Scottish county of Linlithgow. He numbers his workmen by the thousand, and he loads 3,500 railway trucks with wheatgrain, all of which lie grows on the share principle with his men. For sweetening' and preserving foddur, and to prevent hay from fermenting and becoming mouldy when stacked, the antiseptic properties of salt make it a most valuable remedy. Chloride of sodium, whether in the form of common white salt or rock salt in many respects is an agricultural necessity.