RURAL TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXX, Issue 14977, 24 April 1909, Page 4

RURAL TOPICS.

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAEi A consignment of cattle from Southland suffered considerably on the way to Christchurch this week. On th« arrival of the special train which car« ried them at Ashburton, it was ascertained that several of the animals had fallen during the journey and had been trampled to death. Mr John Small, of Wheatstone, wha returned to Ashburton yesterday from Australia, states that he was not sa successful with the- consignment oJ stock he took over to Sydney, this yeai as with those he took in former years. He attributes this to the fact that Queensland buyers were not present at the sales in large numbers, being af« fected by the dry season that had been experienced. Mr Small secured first and special prize with a mare by Vanquisher, in the class for brood mares, and first'' prize with a three-year-old filly by John Ballance. He sent ono three-year-old and two two-year-olds to Melbourne to compete at the August show. He was obliged to sell his bulls at half the price he obtained in former yeans. Mr W. Spponer, of Rangiora, had! a yield of seventy-seven bushels of peas per acre from a field on a farm occupied by him in White Street. During the present threshing season, writes the Ashburton correspondent of the ".Lyttelton Times," farmers in the Longbeach district have been obliged to suffer a good deal of inconvenience as a Tesult of dissatisfaction among threshing machine hands. In several instances mills have had to be staffed by farmers' regular employees. ! One ground for dissatisfaction is the fact that the growth of straw in crops on swampy lands this season has been unusually rank, and under the contract system the men complain that they cannot make satisfactory wages. No fewer than thirty men left various machines during the season, a few days sufficing to givs them grounds for discontinuing work. It is worth noting that on some machines in the Ashburton county employees have made no less than £3 a week clear, for a term of three months, while others have made little more than £1 ss.