ThE FARMER'S KNOWLEDGE OF SCIENCE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 29, 29 October 1907, Page 2

ThE FARMER'S KNOWLEDGE OF SCIENCE.

,',;: NOW AND YEARS AGO; An "official of ono of the Wairarapa branches 1 of tho'Department'of'Agriculture informs our correspondent that there has been

a gradual decrcaso of calls by farmers; upon the stock offices for tho curing of disease This does not mean that there has been ,lcss disease, but that the farmer is betted fitted now than formerly to cope with the outbreak. Time, was when the calls, upon tlio .various stock.offices in the Wairarapa, and no,doubt elsowhere, wero of a , daily character and of a trivial nature. The. farmor, in many instimces, had only an elementary knowledge of the, manner in which disease-stricken stock should bo treated. Long-sounding names, like, tuberculosis, and actinomycosis, and • cryptics like hydatids and cysts, had a strangely woird meaning to the man on tho land, who. in his youth' had been taught to regard'the particular disease simply ;as growths. Hj3 terror was intensified by the action of several, stock.'inspectors and '.newspaper reporters,, who fired a bacteriological vocabulary at him ou every available.occasion. His nerves wea- 1 . koned, and night and day ho had "visions,", m which the principal characters, .were him-, solf, his disease-smitten stock, and an inspector as "the Lord' High Executioner" with,:'a blood-dripping .sword six..feet long. If. his pig sneezed,' the farmer thought of consumption, and if his cow kicked a little more.th'an usual, ho conjured up dreams.of ,ihamro"rtis and "gravel paralysis." '. Gravel paralysis/was an imaginative disoaso brought from South' Africa by a humourous vetennarian, r jwho made use. of the term'when he wished, any om. to believe.,that the disease, was/something of a nature which it was impossible for science, to cure. In those days the-farmer neypr ate any meat without a nightmare ; of microbes ■following the mea1..... Possibly .the only things which eventually saved his. intelligence, were the leaf lets, distributed by the. Department of Agriculture,. and the lectures, with'practical illustrations, by the veterinarians'./'. ful knowledge of the r p6wer or antiseptics, the ■farmor came fully into the light, to.'.'the advantage of'himself and tho country,generally. In fact, the advance in'this/respect has been so;great of late years that the.time is fast approaching when every, farmer,/.will be his own stock inspector; , .... .;',.