AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXI, Issue 7143, 21 January 1884, Page 6

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

It is to bo feared (says tho Leader) that the disease tuberculosis exists among cattle in the Colony to a more serious extent than any one was aware of. The locust pest is proving a terrible scourge to the north and east of Shepparton. The young vines have been completely stripped of their leaves, and all fruits have suffered more or loss from their ravages.

According to the Sydney Mail, the weather has recently been of a variable character in New South Wales. There are still parched pastures and starving stock. Indeed, taking throughout, the year has been a bad one for pastoralists. The losses of stock have been very heavy. Agriculturists were much better favoured. Cereals, hay, and sugar have been yielding abundantly. The sugar harvest is nearly completed. Wheat is still being reaped. The latter is of excellent quality, and farmers now regret that they did not place much larger areas under crops. Large quantities of wool are being brought to the coast. The system of preserving fodder as ensilage is slowly advancing in Victoria, several farmers in the Bacchus Marsh district having formed silos of lucerne and other green feed. The farm bailiff at the Ararat Lunatic Asylum (Mr Reid) has just completed the filling of an experimental silo for the purpose of making ensilage. The silo is 12ft square and 81ft deep. Into this 12 tons of green feed, cut up roughly into about inch lengths, has been put. Rye and other English grasses have been principally used. The silo has been covered at the top with straw, on which boards were placed. Over this is a layer of sand bags, and the whole is surmounted by loose stones to give weight. When being filled the cut grass was put in layers and trodden down by men. The harvest isjprogressing satisfactorily in Victoria. R

The trial of combined stripping and grain-cleaning machinery (says the Australasian) held at Dookie for the .£3OO premium offered by the Government was in one sense satisfactory, although complete success was not attained. The trial left little doubt that the kind of machine desired will be perfected in the Colony. The premium was intended to encourage the importation or production within the Colony of a machine such as the combined harvester of California. There was no time, owing to the shortness of the notice, for American machines to come over to the trial, and for the same reason local inventors had not sufficient time to work out their designs. Under such circumstances the result of, the Dookie trial was better than might have been expected. Two machines entered the field, one invented by Mr Morrow, and manufactured by Messrs Jos. Nicholson and Co., and the other invented by Mr Rupert Smith, of Beaufort, and manufactured by the trustees of the late Mr Geo. Munro, Ballarat. Althoug’h Mr Rupert Smith’s machine did not do any work owing to an accident having occurred, its design gave great satisfaction to practical men on the ground, and inspired confidence that at another time it would succeed in accomplishing the required work, Messrs Jos. Nicholson’s machine got through its work with but few delays, stripping the crop well and putting a firstclass sample in the bag. No one who witnessed the trial could doubt that with a little more time for experimenting these machines would have worked with complete success. Seeing that a premium of £l-000 was unsuccessfully offered by the South Australian Government for such a machine a few years ago, the hope which is now given of success is an important matter.