AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1216, 10 March 1880, Page 2

AGRICULTURAL ITEMS.

a .A'NebrasTta correspondent of the Western -Rural,- has become convinced by observ-atio'ii-arid experience'that corn need not necessarily contain, smut in order to be injurious i! tb'- cattle';' oldj' 'indigestible stalks causedtopactibn; b£ stbmacli; jif given green' food, like rye, says, orrootSj say we,; losses raay.be looked, •fdr. 1 &**'- a^ViiUU a.i-' 1 '«- jiJ xi - «""-'" - I *-" •

Mr. John M. Bailey, of Winning Farm, Mass., reports to The American Cultivator the results of an experiment showing, as he thinks, that the manure from one pig kept on a tight floor shielded from rain, and supplied from time to time with dry muck enough to absorb all liquids, would be sufficient for fertilizing " a little more than an acre a year." A runholder in ETawke's Bay calls attention to a somewhat singular circumstance. When thistles became common in' that district the sheep /ate them, and their faces were so pricked'that whole flocks could be seen with their mouths and noses covered with scabs. Now they eat the thistles as much as over but they never get sore faces. Even the lambs seem to have inherited the knowledge of how to pick the succulent parts of the "Scotchmen'' without hurting themselves. The thistle is exceedingly common this year, but runholders seem to have lost their old dread of it.

Mr. William Bas3etfc, dating from Newlyn, writes to the Bendigo Independent: " The following statement of fact I consider worthyour readers' notice,' I have been proprietor of a threshing machine for the past ten years. My attention was a day or two ago directed to a number of farmers who gathered round, my machine while engaged on the farm of Mr. John Nance, Newlyn, to see for themselves the* return from a new kind of oats, for the. first season grown in Victoria,, and called- the Dauish oat, the seed, being imported from New Zealand. Tothe surprise of all, the result was theastonishing yield of 104 bushels per acre ;; a paddock of six arid a-half acres haveno doubt as to the correctness of thearea) gave 676 bushels. I haye mado close inquiries about the crop in question,, and from what I can learn I certainly believe all that I have written to be correct."