WAIAREKA.

Otago Witness, Issue 1416, 11 January 1879, Page 18

WAIAREKA.

(from our own correspondent.) The weather still continues very dry, but within this last day or two refreshing showers have fallen. Although the crops are too far advanced to derive very great benefit from rain now, yet the late showers will fill out the grain a little before it ripens. On the whole the orops throughout the district are good, ; notwithstanding the unusually dry seasou. j Already the yellow tinge which precedes the '

approach of harvest is perceptible over many fields, and ere another fortnight has passed th* sound of the reaper will be pretty general. I understand a good many reapers and binders will be used throughout this district during the ensuing harvest. The prospect, looking westward through the 1 Waiareka valley, will soon be one which should gladden the heart of any lover of agriculture ; when from the sea to the Kakanui Mountains, a distance of more than twenty miles, lies unfolded to view one unbroken line of golden corn. Rapidly every available pieceof arable land is being brought under cultivation, and as the climate is far too dry for grazing, soon the whole district will present the appearance of one vast field, which in harvest will be a sight worth seeing. . It would be a grand thing for this— as indeed for the whole Oamaru dibtrict— if proprietors would plant out belts of gum trees at stated intervals, or along their boundary lines, say in the proportion of one acre in every hundred. Besides forming excellent shelter and modifying the effects of the parching hot winds we get every spring, the trees would attract moisture and consequently increase the rainfall. But there is scarcely any likelihood of this being done while the great bulk of the land is in the hands of so few.