AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 49, 30 November 1909, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

A owe belonging to Mr an Ashbarto-ii farmer, recently gave birth to five lambs. Two of the lambs died, but the remaining three, are and healthy. . Speaking technically, a single horsepower is a forco sufficient to raiso 33,0001b one. foot high in one minute This, wo are told, is the unit by which English and American mechanics measure power developed in any manner by steam, by means of electric motors, or by real horse flesh. The actual work done may bo measured in tho same way. Fanners will be. surprised._perhaps, to learn that one of tho visiting commerce delegates is so impressed with the magnificent blooming quality of tho gorso in New Zealand that ho has arranged for some seed to bo forwarded to him on his return. An export trade in gorse seed would result in a big thing for some of our fanners. In a recent issue of a well-known English agricultural journal there appeared the following:—"Mr Brodie hai shipped 300 carefully-selected live English 'sparrows to New Zealand 1 , hoping that their descendants will keep down the grubs. From our experience of English sm'tcws they will probably do more to demolish' the.wheat. In years to come the. New Zealand farmers will crv ,<mt for something to keep down tho snarrows." W« are afra.id a good manv of our New Zealand farmers who g»ow grain will be inclined to think that the years "have come." Prom our earlies childhood we have been taught, and our children are still so taught, that plants do not absorb nitrogen bv means of their leaves from tho air, and it therefore completelv ut> sets our present views to be told' bv Thomas Jamieson. a well-known Scotch flirrieuUnral that plants have this power. He asserts that plants obtain their nitrogen bv means of-what he calls nitrogen assimilators on the vouriff leaves. Sometimes 'these assirnilators are in one part "f the leaf, and sometimes in another, but he has found them on every plant ho has examined from forest trees to beans, turnips, beet, tomato and geranium These nitrogen assimilators arc called olubnwrav