MISCELLANEOUS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1834, 14 January 1887, Page 8

MISCELLANEOUS.

The cost and trouble of drying appears to be the rock on which tobacco growing in Eogland will come to grief. The Covent Garden Gazette expresses the opinion that the cost will be more than the results will warrant, and advises farmers, instead of growipg bad tobacco, to go in for cultivating good fruit: ' The following paragraph,' from the Queenslander of the 11th ult., should afford food for reflection by the owners of Ayrshire cattle :— " It is no use blinking the fact that many of the dairy cows introduced into Queensland within the past two years from New South Wales, Victoria, and New Zealand, and sold as Ayrshires, have proved utter counterfeits at the pail. Whether this has been the result of the milksecreting qualities having become latent through disease, or whether the pedigrees, which. trace back to some of the best,* milking strains in Scotland, have been manufactured for the occasion, it is difficult to gay ; but the fact remains that as milkers many of them cannot compete with ordinary bush cows, picked up in the Brisbane yards for a few pounds." Some districts in the Australian colonies are at present undergoing a visitation of beetles; At Pyansford, nsar Geelong, a dense cloud covering 'a space about two miles in length, caused travellers some difficulty in continuing their journey. So voracious did they prove 'at Avoca that not even a vestige of thistles* was left on their line of march. '

Baron yon Mueller pronounces the Camperdown thistle not to be be identical, as was supposed, with the Canadian thistle, which has established itself at Bungaree, bat as belonging to the cardutcs fn/cnocwhalus class. The expert,*

I mental^ attempt to^eradicate'.the pest in the , I Bungaree district by treating it with chloride of ' '•limef'prdvec!;. ;a dismalfaUureV 'ai£d*tHß^cWn*cH]r decided recently to serve, notices on those per-, sous concerned, under the ' Thistle' Act, requiring them to cut down the thistles to prevent them spreading by means of the scattering of the seed.

• The " Anglo- Australian," writing to the European Mail, makes the following remarks: — " Some time since I referred to the important position that Australasian wheat appeared about to take on the markets here. I would draw the special attention of cereal cultivators in Australia and New Zealand generally to the facfc~for fact it is — that many millers here are much disappointed at the reduction in the colonial supplies of grain, at the apparent contraction of the area, and generally at the. smallness of the ' visible * supply of antipodean, wheat.' I would once more urge upouthe careful consideration of Australasian farmers the fact that in this country there is a strong disposition to welcome imports of Anstralian . and New Zealand grain. It is felt more and, more that it is of increasing importance, that this country should not entirely .depend on American grain; and just now there ' are very significant signs that Russia will not long continue to be a great grain exporter, and it is well known to those who study the statistics of the cereal situation that the wants of the Continent are rapidly growing. India certainly sends a great deat of grain, but it usually comes in a very dirty state ; and as under the new conditions of roller milling wheat must be clean before it goes to the first ' break,' this dirt adds much to the miller's cost and trouble. I again repeat that, in the present temper of the home trade towards America, it would be well for Australian cultivators to consider seriously the very great advantages that they would certainly reap by putting an increased area under grain. The markets here have risen of late, and, with an increasing population and a rapidly contracting wheat area in England, there is, it seems to me, a great inducement for the Australasian colonies to put in large supplies of wheat."

It is feared that the wire worm has been introduced into Canterbury, as some potatoes in the Opacra district are said to have been almost completely destroyed by ifc. A sample has been submitted to Professor Ivey, of the School of Agriculture, but neither he nor Professor Hutton are positive as to the identity of the worm. Thewire worm is the too familiar larva of a beetle known commonly as the click beetle. In England the wire worm does much damage to all crops.