THE ESSAYIST.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 852, 8 January 1879, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE ESSAYIST.

ROTATION OF CROPS.

Br AcfiMESTTJi ai» HosrrsEM.

The acquisition and dissemination of agricultural knowledge has received so little cnewatagement in the past, that the action of the North Otago Agricultural and Pastoral Association claims commendation for its apparent liberality of sentiment in keeping pace w&fa the giant strides in progress onr eoantiry is making by recognising so early in the history of a recently-established agricultural district, not only the desirableness bnfc

the importance of getting the farming community to make themselves acquainted with , their peculiar business. The proper rotation by which to work agricultural land has ever been considered a 'question of the first importance by those more particularly engaged in agricultural pursuits, but only by them as a matter of £ s. d., affecting merely their personal pockets. The commonly accepted idea is that this is a question which cannot possibly have any interest for anyone but a tenner; that it is a hobby to be discussed at farmer's clubs; that a man is a " bore" if he ventures to rake up such a subject for. conversation outside the confines of his own corn-fields; and that it is a momentous question of national importance, and the greatest magnitude few can imagine or believe. That "bread is the staff of life" we are taught from infancy. We write it a3 a proverb and accept it as a truism. Without bread what should we do. The idea is appalling. What would the reality be? Such a state of matters is quite within the bounds of possibility, and that possibility will or will not become probability is for our fanners by their practice to decide. It is for them to exercise wisdom and caution, foresight, and prudence. History teaches us that not one of all those countries which produced corn for other lands in the past have remained corn-makers. Should not this significant fact be sufficiently suggestive of our probable future ? Great Britain has contributed her share towards rendering unproductive the best lands of the United States of America which have supplied her with corn precisely as Ancient Home robbed Sardinia, Sicily, and the rich lands of the African Coast of their fertility. Do we not export both bread and meat» What equivalent do we import ? In the older established countries of Europe the qnestion of rotation has given rise to many and diverse theories, any one of which cannot bo considered as a true and universal solution of the matter ; practically it cannot be solved by the enunciation of any general rule by whomsoever laid down. Three years, four years, and five years have each and all been selected as the most proper term or period for a rotation, and each of these periods has still its admirers and champions. Who has the effrontery to say that anyone is the correct one, and the other two wrong ? It is surely reasonable to imagine that the first may be as correct, and no more so, as the latter. It is allowed that circumstances alter cases. One man's circumstances may justify him in accepting the three years' system; his right-hand neighbour may with equal justice accept the Sour years' plan ; whilst his left-hand friend may shrewdly adjudge the live years' rotation the beat for him. There are those who will dogmatically assert that one certain cereal must of necessity, in good farming, follow another certain cereal, and that to depart from this rule is an infringement of ati established law. making no allowance for possible circumstances. This is objectionable. Upon perusal of the text of this essay the question arises, "What is to be the test of adaptability ?"' Nothing more practical can be evolved than that "the net profits" should be the answer. Clearly this is so. The net profits should bethctcstof "the rotation best adapted." Were it demonstrated to them that a certain course of culture lie calculated to produce the greatest net return, that course would of necessity fulfil the primary condition of adaptability. Then would remain for consideration only the clause relating to the maintenance of fertility. Always retiieiuliering the youth of New Zealand, and more j»rticularly of Waitaki, as a grain grower, it appears at first as asking too much of any one to demand and expect a definite and '"decided reply to the query which forms the substance of this article. But on further consideration it appears unreasonable to infer that the essayist is invited to lav tlowtt in the style of a dogma from the Vatican, the formula, par excellence, for working a jiarccl of land in the district of Waitaki. Such an inference would be doing scant justice to the common sense of the President and Council of tiie North Otago Association. Neither in this case nor in any other would it be possible to arrive at troth by such a course. It being as impossible as it is impracticable to lay down a general law which may hold good over a given estate of any extent, how much further removed from the possible is tfic idea of one general enunciation being good for a vast district. Let it be admitted in all honesty that no general rule can be laid down as to course of cropping, period, or quantity of sowing or other details dependent on soil, climate, and j circumstances for a district whose natural formation and geological characteristics are so various. However, as agitation is the sole means of litierating the hidden treasures of the earth, even so is it a successful means ;.>f unmasking error, prejudice, and superstition. Agricultural production has been raised to rank amongst the sciences. In this spirit is it prosecuted, and successfully so, bv eminent men throughout Europe. Science and art. theory and ~ practice, have been shown to be "necessary to each other's existence, and not. as was vulgarly supposed Inimical to each other's welfare. It is true that in the land of onr fathers' insular prejudices for old established customs merely heeausc they are old. and old-world superstitions concerning ideas handed flown from generations long "since returned to mould, have still to be combatted, but compulsory education and the system of railways, that greatest of all civilisers, will soon have enlarged the understandings of the most barbarous of onrßritish brethren. We are all conversant with the opposition and even enmity that the revelations of science have received from our doctors of theology ; but one by one, and little by little, they feel themselves obliged to enlarge their views, to reconsider their dogmas, to scrape down and repaint their old edifice, else their occupation were gone. So must it be with our agriculturists, they must keep pace, or be superseded. If agriculture be a scior.ee, farmers are, or ought to be, scientific men. Are they so 1 Oliservation of the class of which I am a unit warrants an answer in the negative. If we succeed in raising a good, sound, and remunerative crop, we sclf-complaccntly soliloquise within ourselves that we arc to the manner bom. That we have been hatched with the instincts of a farmer ; that at least we know more about our business than does our neighbor over the fence, whose crop does not look so flourishing. But let us be comparatively unsuccessful and the fault will l>e that of anything except ourselves. The ground, the- seed, the weather, the pickle, the planets, will be anathematised in succession, and the truth undiscovered. Tims we co on from season to season, working hard ft is true, slavishly so, but working in the darkncs3 of ignorance. With most of us onr occupation is simply a game of pitch and toss. Sometimes we say "heads' and sometimes we say "tails"; sometimes we are right, and at other times wrong. A game of chance with which we have not made ourselves experts, and to this we seem perfectly resigned, even complacently contented. But our lands have now attained such unequivocal value that this style of fanning cannot possibly survive any great period, but must gradually perhaps, but not the less certainly, fade away with the times that are past. Pace for pace with the railways and public works generally will step increasing rentals, and with high rents will be of necessity high farming. Here it may be suggested that, now the arable acreage of this island has been almost entirely made freehold, and has proved its value as a grain growing soil beyond all cavil and dispute, the time has come when the societies of money lenders should allow more equitable terni3 on the security of land and crops. Growing crops are admittedly precarious, but not nearly to the extent our merchants and bankers assume when a hen is to lie effected or an overdraft requested. But who can deny that landed security is as eood as the bank "itself, and it is as true that the terms of a loan for which landed property is given as security, arc most harsh, and quite disproportioned to negotiations of a more slippery character. And it is on this ground, and for this reason, thatthegeneral, almost universal, backwardness of settlers to improve their holdings beyond the barest necessities is so striking. Had money or credit been issued to the landowners on terms fairly proportionate to the undoubtedly safe security, the outrageous and desolating nor'-westers that sweep our plains would by this time have been checkmated. The still j dreary expanse which in courtesy we call I our landscape, would have been relieved by clumps and stretches of forest, that would be beautiful to the most fastidious, and our landed proprietors would be a happier, wealthier, more prosperous and generous class than they can at present claim to be.

There is a stoc! . •■•. - '.,:ithat "t.:-<v.'.-._-don't pay." This may have had some meaning at one time ; but that it should still be accepted as good for these times is singular. Certain it is, the profit and los 3 account of a farm is dependent on many circumstances : what branch of commerce is not ? Admit that the farmer' is' at the mercy of the elements, and that his returns, be they as.great as they may, can never be commensurate with his wear and tear of body and mind, still the very worst- cases make a living, whilst the more fortunate, or perhaps the more intelligent, amass wealth. A cloud may arise in the north ; so may a wind ; and our crops may be harvested by one unique operation. Or Boreas has smiled on us, and our grain is in sheaf or stook, when the southerly buster comes down by way of variety, and our prospects are not only | damped, not only mildewed, but completely swamped. Pcradventure we are threshing, determining the result of our year's labor and anxiety; and lo! some fine morning our nostrils sniff the grateful odour of burnt grain; we look around, and in lieu of machinery and stacks of grain, we behold a stack of charcoal. Such 'things have happened, and such things will happen. We have no authority for expecting that Providence will cast her mantle around, and shield us from the evils that afflict humanity, or that she will protect us from the consequences of natural phenomena in an especial manner. Great as we, in our ignorance, think are the drawbacks against which we contend, are they any worse, or as bad, as those which beset our fellow-laborer in other countries ? This island is said by those who have travelled and seen most of the grainproducing lands in the world, to be singularly adapted for such pursuits, and to be exempt in a high degree from the evils which aillict most grain producing lands. Certainly we have to pay excessive rates for indifferent labor;' we have an occasional plague of caterpillars, purely local in their ravages ; that we have high winds no one can deny; rust, smut, and blight are familiar to us all; insects of various kinds, lilliputian in size, but legion in number, do occasionally blast our prospects of a root or green crop; But which of all these visitations is not common to all countries ? One small contingent of the main army of locusts of the United States told off for the invasion of this island could, and would, overrun and devastate the whole of the millions of acres of Otago and Canterbury in a few days, if not hours. There is a sister country, the proud producer of stock yclept grasshoppers six imperial inches "from the tip of the nose to the point of the tail, when, if it be not libellous so to say, a grasshopper leg is occasionally placed on the dinner table as a joint ! We accredit the puny creatures with which we are familiar with much destruction ; how many acres would it take to keep a South American conqueror? Let us he prepared, then, for vicissitudes in price and uncertain yields, for the man who will not make up his mind to these allowances at the outset, but will buoy himself up with too sanguine expectations and false estimates, will assuredly, if lie be a man of ordinary sensibility, be doomed to bitter disappointment. It is the history of the past, and will be of the future.

Nature's antagonism may be great, but man's incapacity is greater. Our failures and losses are not so much due to the warring of the elements, as to our inability to combat them ; not so much to the poverty of our soil as to our wretched mode of working it. Management is the key of many treasuries, but there are few capable of using it. A manager in a strictly practical sense is the rara avis of this country, and it may be of any country. What is management ? Truly, a most comprehensive question. To be consistent, as the first great attribute ; to have firmness and tact to govern ; to have forethought and powers of perception ; to have some knowledge of human nature ; to be a judge of character ; to be energetic, active and industrious ; to be economic, yet not mean ; to know what to do, and how to do; when to do, and where to do are all implied, and yet the question remains unanswered. But the crucial test is the value per bushel our grain has cost us. The man who can produce at the least cost is thus the best manager. But we must not imbibe the idea that mere narrowness of expenditure is management. Oftentimes the larger the expenditure the greater the profits. For instance, never be afraid of ploughing your fields on every possible occasion. A constant agitation is one of the best fertilizers. The oftener your plough the more you manure. This should be an axiom. And by ploughing, I do not acknowledge the superficial shuffling of the contract stroke; such I hold as of more harm than good to any land. To such may honestly be attributed the rapid spreading of evils such as sorrel, hogweed, wireweed, el hoc ijcnus omne. Indeed, in this elementary country, where everything connected with the farm is done by pure guess, and where reason, science, and knowledge, are a-wanting, I am inclined to give " rotation " a secondary place until the effects of good cultivation are thoroughly acknowledged ; for what does it matter what is put in if one does not know when, and where, and how to put it in. There is more in the manner in which a crop is put in than there is in tiie crop or seed itself. And it would have been more like stepping on the lowest rung of the agricultural ladder had the public been invited to consider some one, or more, of the processes by which land is brought into a condition suitable for cropping. The multifarious " notions " in connection with the art of farming are sufficiently diverse to be ludicrous. Coming more particularly to the subject of tin's paper, the difficulty seems great to speak of the district of Waitaki as of a single farm of moderate area, as by the text of the e6say we are invited to do. Albeit New Zealand extends over 13 degrees of latitude, and naturally presents considerable diversity of climate, its character still is everywhere insular, mild, and healthy, and its ultima tkule is accredited with the production of the usual European cereals with little variations ; yet different districts and localities of the same district are from their natural features and geological formation, more eminently adapted for the growth of cereals, or grasses, as the case may be; and in the district of Waitaki are localities (if that be a sufficiently specific term) rich in soil and warm in aspect, where a grazing farm should be considered a crime; there arc others moister, colder, and more bleak, more naturally adapted for grasses, where to grow grain would be suicidal. Permanent pasture. excepD in such localities as are permanently adapted for such, should be erased from the fanners' thoughts, and ought not to be taken into account in considering a rotation ; it is opposed to all progress ; let it be confined to our mountains. Our two staple exports are wheat and wool. The best wool farmer seldom or never nets as much a3 the worstwheat farmer; therefore wheat at its worst is as good as wool at its best (exclusively, of course, of such localities as are more naturally adapted for grass). To produce wheat at will and indefinitely should be the endeavor of the farmer : but with our imperfect knowledge of the matter, this is in the meantime/though far from impossible, or even improbable, impracticable. We must grow as much wheat as we can in conjunction with roots and vegetables, by feeding off which latter with stock, we may expect to at least maintain the fertility of our soil. Science leads us to believe that the earth itself lives, moves, and has its being as do we ourselves; that in fact there is no such thing as inanimate nature. Without doubt it teaches us that the vegetable world lives by daily food, as does the animal creation, and not only so, but that the different species have their distinct habits and peculiar foods. Thus it comes to be known what forms the sustenance of onr cereals and our roots and our grasses with which we are more particularly concerned. Many years of assiduous observation and experiment have proved the fact that the aliment preferred by cereals is nitrogen, by the leguminous plants potash, and by roots the phosphate, and to these must be added lime. 1 say the preferred aliment, but not the exclusive, for these substances in various proportions are necessary to each and all, and to preserve to the earth its fertility we must, by some means or other, supply it periodically with these four substances in quantities equal to those removed by the crops. The most ancient system of cultivation which necessity devised and practice recognised for maintaining the fertility of the soil is that which is still employed in many countries under the name of triennial rotation. Every three years the soil receives eight tons of manure per acre. It lies one year in fallow, and afterwards produces two crops of wheat. By this

ystem the balance is strikingly exact with regard to the nitrogen and phosphoric acid, whilst potassa and lime accumulate. That is the eight tons of manure supply the soil, as proved by chemical analysis, with almost exact quantities of nitrogen and phosphoric acid to those absorbed by the crops, whilst the deposit of potash and. lime are in excess of.that taken out by. the crops. There is then nothing surprising in the fact of this system maintaining the fertility of the soil;as absolutely nothing is lost. Birt'to'obtain the eight tons of manure required every three years, cattle must-be kept; cattle .require pasture, and pasture requires irrigation. Agriculture for a- long time has endeavored to escape from fallowing, and it has succeeded - by introducing roots and vegetables, whereby. the rotation has been extended to five yearsi' The vegetables have nourished stock, and the stock have deposited their manure, and the system has been deemed sufficient.- The balance indeed is more particularly • exact than the triennial system. For the triennial rotation accumulates important quantities of alkalies and lime in the soil as pure loss, whilst through the clover roots and vegetables introduced by the quinquennial plan, which have a marked preference for these elements, they are. in great measure turned to account. But the greatest advantage of the five years rotation consists in its' influence with regard to nitrogen. It is shown by careful analysis that the full measure of this is maintained, and that it is to the vegetable of the series that this maintenance is due, for whilst cereals draw the greater v part of their nitrogen from the soil, vegetables, on the other hand, obtain theirs from the atmosphere. With the five years rotation, agriculture has been brought to substitute the sale of meat for that of corn, and it has derived decided advantages from the substir tution; for the sale of the cereals causes a loss of potassa, phosphoric acid, and nitrogen, which cannot be compensated for except by a supply of manure or by irrigation. If on the contrary, the crops are consumed on the farm by the animals, we find in their excrements almost the whole of the phosphoric acid and potash contained in their food. As to the nitrogen, their respiration ejects about one-third of it into the atmosphere, the other two-thirds return to the soil in the excrement. In this there would be an inevitable loss, were it not for the vegetable of the rotation, which derives an equal quantity from the atmosphere. All knowledge is the result of observation and experience. A small moiety only can be due to observation, as must be admitted by the most consummate egotist. Were it not so the world would stand still, progress would be a dead letter. Let our " practical " men then admit and accept as truth the revelations of science ; let them dovetail the experience of others into their own observation. Let science and art work together. Scientific research and analysis then teach us that a quinquennial rotation, composed of roots, cereals, and vegetables in certain proportions, maintains indefinitely, without any foreign aid whatever, the fertility of the soil. But should it be desirable to increase the productive power of our land, all that would be necessary would be to procure proper fertilizers for the crop to be grown. If the cereal crop were to be increased, a nitrogenous manure would be wanted ; if the clover crop, potash ; if the root crop, phosphate of lime. But this is not perfection. We have not brought the earth into subjugation to our will. We must humour her and nourish her witli infinite care and precaution else she will produce an abortion. Science imagines a simpler system, whereby by means of the four agents already made mention of, we may re-constitute in every respect the debilitated nature of our lands. Then no rotation of crops is necessary. We produce at will meat or bread according as serves our j interests. We export without fear the whole , of the products of our fields if we see advantage in so doing. We cultivate the same plant upon the same soil indefinitely if we find a market for the produce. The soil is to us in future merely a medium of production. We are restrained by only a single necessity—to maintain at the disposal of our crops these four elements in sufficient proportion that they may always obtain the quantity their organisation demands. Without possessing Aaron's rod of divination, and without wishing to assume the prophetic cloak of Isaiah, it is yet reasonable to predict that this scientific dream will before many generations have passed away and have become a brilliant realisation. In the meantime let us try to realize the value and significance of the words of the greatest of modem authorities. Baron Liebeg, on agriculture, says: —"In the year 1555-56 above ten-millions ewt. of guano were imported, of which the greater portion remained in England. In the course of half a century more than sixty millions cwt. of bones have been imported into that country ; yet all this mass of manure is not worth mentioning when considered in relation to the arable surface of Great Britain, and is but a drop when compared to the sea of human excrement carried by the rivers to the ocean. I will show the teachers of agriculture a nation who, without the aid of science, have found the philosopher's stone which those very teachers in their blindness vainly seek. I will point out to them a land the fertility of which has for 3000 years never decreased, but, on the contrary, has been ever on the increase, and where more men are crowded together on a square mile than are to be found in the same space in England. It is quite impossible for us in Europe to form an adequate conception of the great care which is bestowed in China upon the collection of human excrements. In the eyes of the Chinese these form the true sustenance of the soil. The estimation in which it is held is so great that everybody knows the amonut voided per man in a day, month, or year, and a Chinese would regard as a gross breach of manners the departure from his house of a guest who neglects to let him have that advantage to which he deems himself justly entitled in return for his hospitality." Every system of farming based on the spoliation of the land leads to poverty. The country in Europe which in its time most abounded in gold and silver was nevertheless the poorest. All the treasures of Mexico and Peru brought to Spain by the richly laden fleets melted away because the Spaniards had forgotten, or no longer practised, the art of making the money return to them which they had put in circulation, because they did not know how to produce articles of exchange required by other nations who were in possession of their money. The deplorable effects of the spoliation svstem of farming is nowhere more strikingly evident than in America, where the early colonists in Canada, in the States of New York,' in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, found tracts of country which, for many years, by simple ploughing and sowing, yielded a succession of abundant harvests. We all know what has become of these fields. In less than two generations, though originally so teeming with fertility, they were turned into deserts, and in many districts brought to a state of such absolute exhaustion that even now, after having lain fallow more than one hundred years, they will not yield a remunerative crop. A child can comprehend that a well, however deep it may be, which receives no supply of water, must, in the end, become empty if its water is constantly pumped out. Our fields are like this well of water.

"All's Well that Ends Well."

The best system of rotation of crops adapt6d to the Waitaki District, I think, is the following :—The soil and climate of that district are much the same as where I spent a portion of my life, and where the system I advocate is followed ; and no other system produces the results like it does. Other and numerous systems have heen tried, year by year, by the side of this system, and all have failed to produce the same amount of profit. I will commence with virgin soil, as I have seen both it and old arable land brought under the same system of cropping. Sow oats on the first furrow, which should be ploughed not shallower than four or five inches deep, and laid as flat as is possible for it to be done, as, thereby, the surface vegetation stands a better chance of decomposing. The next year cross plough, and an inch deeper than the first year. Let the land be well pulverised, if at all cloddy, and sow down with turnips, if you are keeping sheep on the farm, and eat them off the land by sheep. The treading which the land gets by the sheep during the time they are eating off the turnips, is of more value than most farmers are aware of. The urine

of the sheep is Just the best plant food stimulant that can be applied to any land. Likewise, sheep dung is very good food for plants for one season. It is, like guano, only good for one season's forcing. There is no manure like farmyard manure for plant, food. It is not only rich in ammonia, and other chemicals, but it also gives a body to the land, whichia as essential as a stimulant. Man cannot live for long on the essence of food/ no matter from what extracted. The stomach would soon become contracted, and refuse.to dolts work* It wants bulk, and bulk it must have, in the shape of bread*,.meat,-and potatoes, &c. So -with arable land', it'is of'the same nature, only in a different form. It must have bulk given to' it in return for what man takes from it, or it will in time give only very poor results. If the farmer has not sheep on the farm, but keeps cattledairy and stores—and pigs, sow the.second year's crop with mangolds. The mangolds, in forcing their roots down for moisture, open the surface and subsoil more than any other root, thereby allewingthe air to penetrate the soil deeper ; and arable land, in a growing state, cannot be too porous. Mangolds are a good fattening food for cattle in the yards where you are making manure ; and every bit of straw that is taken from the land should be returned to it in the shape of manure. Dairy cows, if liberally supplied witii mangolds during the winter, will give far more butter without giving any more milk. Mangolds possess cream-making constituents. The third year plough and sow with wheat, taking care to select the best seed, as the bad requires as much support as the good, with worse results, and you will reap a crop of wheat that will surprise you. The next year, before the subsoil is ploughed down, give the land a good coating of rotten farm manure; and sow down with barley and red clover. If barley is not a valuable article, sow oats instead, and you will reap a good crop of either grain. The clover, as it rises, assists the growth of the grain by keeping cold winds from the surface, and retaining moisture. After harvesting the crops of barley or oats, as the case may be, sheep may be turned into the stubble, where they will obtain some good feed till close upon winter, when they are taken out, so as to let the clover prepare itself for the next year's crop. The sheep will have given the land a good surface of manuring, which will greatly help the rising clover. Eed clover is the best winter fodder for working horses, or for yarded cattle, that you can give them—either cut into chaff or given as long hay. My friends use nothing else during the winter for fodder but red clover hay—long for the yarded cattle, and cut into chaff for horses, mixed with a little barley straw, some oats, and a few beans ; and they are noted for fat cattle and horses. | Cut the clover, and let it lie for a day or two, and then turn it over ; after another day, put it into heaps, and when properly withered, cut and stack for winter fodder. An acre or two of red clover, if sown by itself, can be cut in the spring and early part of the summer, for green feed for horses, and is an excellent thing for them, after living on dry food all the winter. ; and for this purpose also, an acre or two can be sown with tares and rye mixed, which forms another rich green food for horses. Plough down the clover stubble (and this of itself is a splendid manuring) and sow wheat, and you will find that this sixth crop will produce more wheat to the acre than the first one did, and also that your land is in much better heart for further cropping. If this system is constantly followed, the land will always be found in good heart, without being laid down with artificial grasses for two or three years. Every paddock that.is not subsoil ploughed should, during the rotation, be once cropped with mangolds, for the sake of opening the subsoil. Every field, after a crop of wheat, should receive a good coating of well-rotted farmyard manure on the stubble before ploughing down. is a great impoverisher of.the soil. Artificial manures and guanos doinot give back an equivalent to the man who uses them largely. They are very, very seldom used by my friends and their very extensive neighbors. They trust to the farmyard manure for the good results which they obtain. A farm must, to make the best results from farming, keep both sheep to eat off the rotation crops, and cattle to make manure in the yard. The farmer who sells one pound worth of straw, looses at least ten shillings by the act. If farming will pay by chance farming, it will pay much better by a regular system. And if it will pay to grow grain, it will pay much better to keep both cattle and sheep and pigs to eat up the refuse and the root crops under a rotation system. All land, to reach the highest results, must be well worked with the plough, with the harrows, and with other farm implements. ' There is no such thing in the farmers' dictionary as working land too much. All grain crops are the better ■ for having a light roller passed over them after the grain has shown two or three weeks above the surface.

All wet and swampy land should be drained. Wet and sour cold land is the deadly enemy to plants—either grain or root. If any paddock becomes very dirty give it one season's fallowing, with good and deep ploughing. The red clover is a good cleaner of itself. It smothers all weed plants. The next best cleaner are peas, but they impoverish the land more than wheat, therefore are objectionable. I have said nothing about artificial grasses, as they do not form a portion of my rotation. But I should expect every farmer to have paddocks of permanent grasses for his summer stock. Whether this essay is successful or not, I do wish that some of your farmers would try this system, if only on a few acres, by the side of any other system, on the same land of land on the same farm, keeping a correct account of both systems, and. comparing them at the end of the sixth crop ; and if my system does not by far give the best returns I will forfeit my reputation. I could have made this essay much longer, but I have tried to be as plain as I could in it. However, I could not have said more to the point.

Tet Again. Farming being an employmen n- ich is carried on very extensively in the Waitaki district, it is very necessary for the farmer to have a thorough knowledge of the best and most efficient method of cultivating the soil in this district. No doubt there are different opinions on this subject entertained by farmers, but by experience and by paying proper attention to cultivate the ground thoroughly and in the proper seasons the farmer will soon overcome most of his difficulties. There are many farmers who pay dearly for their experience before they get a moderate knowledge of farming in this district. Having had experience in farming in New Zealand for thirteen years, and being in the Waitaki district for six years and having watched minutely from year to year the different systems of farming in this district, I have come to the conclusion that the best and most profitable, and at the same time the easiest way to enrich the land, is as follows : In the first place we must take the land in its natural state, and which is generally ploughed for wheat; if the farmer intends to plough twice, as i 3 generally done, first furrow three to four inches in depth by ten to eleven in width. All ploughing of fallow land should, if possible, be finished about the middle of May, and the sowing of wheat commenced. If the farmer intend only to plough once out of tussock land, he should not commence sooner than the middle of November and finish not later than the middle of January ; the depth of furrow should be six inches by nine inches in width, and should be sown from the middle of June to middle of July. In hilly lands all

ground that "lies' off;.-the" sua'Jshpuld, sownfirst.'if possible, for if a_liieavy-ffb«t come it often happens that it is difficult to get the ground properly harrowed. Wheat should bo pickled before sowing. One pound of bluestone is sufficient forfour bushels. Land that is rough should get a harrowing before the wheat is sown, which causes the wheat to braird more evenly ; in the month of; September it should be. rolled, but in cases where the land has been soddehed together it should get a stroke with the harrows before being.;, rolled; but roll immediately after harrow-, ing. Second crop—oats .or barley. If for barley, the land "should be twice. The furrow should be'.jjix inches in depth by ten inches in width..--Barley should be pickled the same as wheat, a'nd should be sown early in October. The land should bo harrowed before sowing, and roll it immediately after sowing. Oats should be sown early in September. Third crop should be a green crop of rape or turnips, and fed off with sheep, aa it pays better to feed off with sheep than cattle, and there is a better chance of enriching the land than with cattle, and the farmer is also surer of a better crop of wheat. Before sowing the wheat a limited number of sheep should be allowed to run over the ground to eat the roots of the rape or turnips Fourth crop—Oats or barley. This is the last ploughing, and should, if possible, be ploughed a little deeper than on former occasions, and early, and also dry sow to grasses in September if with a crop, and if not let it remain to December. If it is ploughed early it will require to be ploughed again. My mixture of grasses is 151bs. perennial rye grass, 71bs. Italian, 21bs. timothy, 21bs. red clover, 21bs. white clover, lib. cow grass, lib. Alsyke ; total, 281bs. to the acre. Land should be harrowed three times before sowing.

Harrow after sowing with grass harrow, and roll immediately after with a hoary roller. Let the land remain in grass for at least three years before cropping" again". This system, if followed, would be very remunerative for this district.