CLUTHA COUNTY COUNCIL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2106, 5 July 1894, Page 11

CLUTHA COUNTY COUNCIL.

The above council met at Balclutha on Friday. Present— Crfl W. Hay (chairman), D. Wallace, W. Rhodes, D. RobertsGn, J. Gumming, W. Dallas, J. R. Mitchell, T. Knowles. and John Johnston.

CORRESPONDENCE.

The Charitable Aid Boird forwarded quarterly return of persons in receipt of aid within the county. — List approved' of. The Charitable Aid Board aIBO forwarded memo, of contribution payable by the council for the year 1894-95— viz , £247 13s 3d. United District of Central Otago also forwarded memo, of amount payable — viz , £507 4s. — Both amounts were ordered to be paid in instalments as formerly. The Clinton Town Board wrote directing attention to certain repairs that were necessary to the county roads within the town district, several culverts being out of order, &c— The council agreed to procure the necessary pipes, cost not to exceed £5.

Mesers Powell, MAdam, and the Ashburton Drug Company each wrote quoting prices for poisoned grain for small birds. — It was agreed to expend £30 on the purchase of poisoned grain to be distributed over the county pro rata according to the rates, the chairman to aecertain which of the parties named would supply that quantity of grain made up in 51b parcels. Mr James Murray wrote complaining of certain horses that were allowed to wander at large on the public roads in the vicinity of his place at Clinton.— Letter referred to ranger at Clinton.

Mr J. A. Wylie wrote asking the council to close road between sections 36 and 37, block VII, Romahapa district. — Road to be closed. Mr W. Heckler wrote directing attention to bad state of culvert near his place at Warepa, and offering to cart necessary stones to repair same.— On the motion of Cr Johnston, Mr Heckler's offer was accepted, and the repairs ordered to be done by the engineer. t Mr John Stoddart, Owaka, wrote asking the council to close present road leading from hid place, and in lieu thereof to open up half-chain road through Mr Bradfield's property. Messrs 2?. Bradfield and G. Morris, the other parties interested, agreed to the course suggested. — On the motion of Cr Knowles, it was agreed to take the necessary steps to have exchange of Toads effected.

Mr G. W. Draper, Ratanui, wrqje asfeiDg for a rebate in the amount of costs incurred in the ease recently decided against him for recovery of rates. — Rseeived.

The National Mortgage and Agency Company 'wrote asking to be informed • whether the road grader recently imported by the company for the council was giving satisfaction. — Clerk to reply that the grader was giving every satisfaction. THE LICENSING QUESTION. The Chairman said that the committee in whose hands the matter of the costs for the recent licensing election had been left had conferred with the Balclutha Borough Council, and it had been decided to state a case for the decision of the Supreme Court, each of the local bodies interested bearing the cost. Cr. Robertson thought the matter should lie over for a month, in order that the present case with regard to wholesale licenses might be decided. Cr Dallas thought the matter might well be left in the hands of the committee, so that the account, which had now been held over for a considerable time, might be paid as soon as possible. The Chairman and Cr Johnston endorsed '.Cr Dallas's remarks, and the matter dropped. Cr Dallas said he had prepared a resolution "in connection with the licensing question which he would move, though he did not know how the council would take it. As they all knew, it ■<was probable that some amendment in the act "would be made this session. He moved — " That "in the event of any amending or consolidating 'measure being introduced into Parliament this session in connection with the Alcoholic Liquors Sale Control Act, this council strongly urge on "the Government the advisablenesa of making - each county a licensing district, together v with any small borough which may be within or contiguous tot ha county boundaries." HSe bad no strong feeling on the subject, but he was satisfied that things would work more ' satisfactorily were the counties, together with 'the other lcoal bodies within their boundaries, wade the licensing district*. Of oourae it was . with a vi«w of malting tua one >gli suio that the "electoral boundaries were made licensing tils* trlots, but &d a matter of fact fresh relit had to NW prepared. Or WAttACfi seconded the motion. Cf Mitchell thought that the whole matter ''fright be greatly simplified by amending it in r 'the direction indicated. Crs Robertson and Cojiming also supported . the motion, contending that it was unfair that the Clutha coilnty should pay for the Costa of ' an election in the Tuapeka and other counties. Cr Rhodes was in favour of the licensing 1 election being held on the same day as the ' general election, and thought the motion should k be amended accordingly. . Cr Johnston sugges-tsd that Cc Dallas1 Bbjould add what was suggested to bis motion. Sbr 1 Dallas declined. His motion would not permit of such an amendment. Tee motion was carried, and. copies ordered 'to be sent to the Government, and members ■for Clutha, Bruce, Tuapeka, and Mataura. ROADS AND "WORKS, ETC. The Engineer reported the progress made on 'the various contracts in hand during the month. The culverts and stone crossings referred to at last meetiog had been repaired. The committee appointed to deal with deferred payment and perpetual lease thirds had allocated tho places •where the money in hand had to be spent. 'Several roadlines in the Catlin's district bad »lso been authorised to be cleared of timber. — • The report was adopted. James Hurring'a tender for contract No. 1669 at 4s per chain was accepted. Cr Wallace moved — "That the council •strike a general rate of |d in the pound and a hospital and charitable aid rate of 3-lGths of a (penDy in the pound, such rates to bo for the year

1894-95, and to become payable in one Bum on the 25-.h August 189*."

Cr Rhodes seconded the motion, which was carried.

On the motion of Cr Dallas the council agreed fco adopt " The RatiDg Act 1882." On tha motion of Cr Robertson, seconded by Cr Rhodes— "lt was resolved to call for separate tenders for each riding from persons willing to act as valuers."

Cr Knowles said a fresh valuation was urgently necessary so far as his district was concerned, for many of the settlers there were not on the roll at all. This was all the business.

At a meeting of Canterbury school committees resolutions protesting against the new scale of salaries adopted by the Board of Education were caVried.

veloped, due to the union of the two ; clouds of steam are therefore produced, the mass swells up and bursts, flaking off and crumbling away as far as the water penetrates, till, if just enough water has been added, it has all fallen to a fine white bulky powder The equation for slaking lime is — CaO+H a O = Ca(HO) :i or CaOH.,O

The moleculat weight of quick lime (CaO) is 56, and that of water (H a O) 18. The equation given above, therefore, means thafe 56 tons of quicK lime will absorb 18 tons of water, and in doing so will be changed into 74 tons of slaked lime. If these proportions of quick lime and water be strictly observed the slaked lime will be perfectly dry, just as d'y as the quick lime itself was before the water was put into it. The water indeed will hive entirely disappeared It is no longer wet water, but water chemically combined with the lime. If less than 18 tons of water be added to the 56 tons of quick lime then the lime will not be all staked ; it will be a mixture of quick lime and slaked lime. If, on 'ho other hand, more than 18 tons of water be aid' j d, then the lime will be all slaved, hut it will be wet ; for all the water in excess of the 18 tons will be there in i's capacity of liquid water. In "bu-ning" limestone either for agricultural use or for mortar one or two points have to be attended to : — (a) The stone must contain a high percentage of c rbonate of lime to begin with, otherwise in the kiln the lime will he liable to unite with the clay and sand to form a kind of slag which will not slake propcly. 1 his slag, too, will form a glassy mass on the outside cf the lumps of stone,iu the kiln and prevent the carbonic acid gas from escaping from the interior, and thus the perfect "bu ning" of the stone will not bo accomplished. (b) The "burning" should be continued long enough and at a high enough temperature io ensure the expulsion of a'l, or nearly all, the carbonic acid, for if this be not effected the parts left "unburnf will nit slake at all, but will rc-

inches into the clear water) a white, light, flaky, chalky sediment will form in the water ; whereas if it were raw stone such sediment would not form under these circumstances Quick lime exposed to the air gradually slakes itself by drawing the necessary water from the atmosphere ; but it draws carbonic acid gas at the same time from the same source, and, instead of forming pure slacked lime, it will be, after long exposure, a mixture of slacked lime and carbonate of lime, the carbonate part of it being in the same state as it was befo-e being "burnt." Such a mixture is then said to be "air slaked." Air-slaked lime is not, of course, so caustic, nor so active in the soil, nor so soluble in water as water-slacked lime. It is therefore, perhaps, safer in contact with tender youn? plants just immediately after germination than strong caustic lime would be ; but its decomposing beneficial action on the soil would be weakened. When small heaps of quick lime are left oub on the paddock for many weeks a good deal of it will have reverted or gone back to this raw condition, and much of its energy will be lost. If, on the other hand, it be at once spread on the ploughed land and harrowed" in it will then slake itself by combining slowly wi'h the moisture of the soil ; and the heat that is always "produced when quick lime is being slaked will warm the soil its If, and thus provide for the seed a warm bed, which is very favourable 111 1 germination.

4, The fourth lime substance to be considered is litno water. This is nothing else than water which has be n shaken up with either quick lime or slaked lime till the water cannot dissolve any more of it. A gallon of cold water will, in this way, dissolve a little more than a fifth of an ounce of quick lime, or about a quarter of an ounce of slaked lime.

5. The fifth modification of litre is " milk of lime," which is nothing else than a mixture of lime water and slaked lime. It is made by shaking up with water a greater quantity of quick lime or slaked lime than the water can

layers with lime (weeds and lime time about) into heaps, which, if dry, are then moistened with a sprinkling of water and left to them^ selves for some weeks. A strong destructive burning action is soon set up, which rapidly reduces the mixed materials to a fine compost of sweet fertile vegetable mould In this operation, however, some of the nitrogen will te lost unless the heaps be covered with a loose layer of 6in or Bin of damp clay to fix the ammonia that is always produced by such t.-eattncnt.

3 Another very important chemical effect produced on clay lands by lime— either quick or slaked— is the 1 berat : on of potash, magnesia, and phosphoric acid, which are present in the clay in the insoluble, and therefore unserviceable, condition In releasing these fertilising materials the whole character of the cay itself is changed for the better. It loses in a great measure, if the service of lime is liberal, its plastic, stubborn, sticky, hard character, and becomes po'ous and friable, and thus more amenable to the ripening and pulveri ing action of the atmosphere, and moro accessible to the tender rootle s and root hairs of plants. 4 Quick lime has a very considerable warming and drying effect on land ; the heat being produced, of course, by the-spontaneous slaking of the lime by the moisture in the soil itself. In a late spring, after a cod, hard winter,' this is a most desir.ble prepar.tion for the seed bed. 5. Quick lime or slaked lime also sweetens sour land by uniting with the low acids in tho soil (humic, ulmic, nnd geic acids, &c , &c.) to which the sourness is due. It is also, for the same reason, an excellent addiion in spring to low-lying land that has been for weeks under water 6. It is claimed for lime, also, that it is very destructive to grubs and the fungi that cause smut and rust in grain ; and it has now beui qtiilc established by field experiments that it is the specific for iingf-r-and-toe in turnips. It is not known whether the action of the lime in this last case is to neutralise the acids favourable to the finger-and-toe growth, or, by its caustic quality, to kill the fungus that causes the evil. In either case a dressing of slaked lime is strongly to be recommended for turnips on low-lying rich lands. Superphosphate is an acid manure— the opposite of lime in that respect— and if it is found that turnips manured with that fertiliser on dampish, low lands are addicted to finger-and-toe, the lecturer would advise a trial with guano or bonedust, with or without lime, instead of the super. Besides all these benefits brought to the land by lime, it is justly claimed for it that it improves to a marked degree the quality of all the crops— grain, pasture, roots, nnd especially barley for malting purposes. It also hastens them on to maturity, and thus procures an early harvest. Indeed, it would bo difficult to say too much in praise of lime as an improver of the soil. Even raw lime ground to powder, and scattered broAdcast on the surface, would in the limelcss dis ricts of Otago and Southland have a very marked beneficial action on the soil. The whole district from Palmerston to the lower end of Waihola (with the exceptions of the belt of limestone that crosses from near the Camp on the Peninsula across the bay to Mansford and the Green Island-Cavershambelt), as well as all the country from Inyercargill to Balc'utha, is badly off for lime^n the soil. Not, altogether, that there is a total absence of lime, but that what there is -and it is not much— i* so combined with the silica in" the clay as to be unavailable. With such splendid agriculture lime in such abundance along the railway line at Waihola and in the Totara-Oamaru, district, it is very provoking that the lime-starved lands between Bdendale and Balclutha should not get the benefit of it. The lecturer suggested that since the prosperity of the country is so much bound up with the success of its farming and grazing pursuits, the Government might, to the advantage of everybody, secure one or more blocks of good limestone country beside the railway, erect limekilns and burn the limestone in quantities equal to the requirements of the country, or even get the stone ground to fine powder ( without burning it at all), and distribute it to farmers at cost price along the line, whenever there are trucks, otherwise, empty passing that way. A farmer within tlrs district "could not, the lecturer believes, spend money more advantageously for the immediate and permanent improvement of his l«nd than, in procuring an abundant supply of lime — burnt, if it can be had cheap enough, or unburnt and pulverised to the state of fine jowder if the otber is beynd bis re°ch Of course this could not be done adeqna'ely w thout very great reduction in railway freight and the lowest possible first cost at the iicneworks, to be arranged in some wf y by Government with ihe vendors, who of course have a perfecS right to get the biggest - price they can for their goods. It cannot be done, of course, without Government action in some form or other. Iv the meantime, travelling by rail from Oamaru to Invereargill, we have to look at our barren 1-mds st>rving and hungering for lime, and to gaze vacantiy and hopelessly at the rich interminable deposit of lime lying ready and waiting for them, but un« att inable o * ing to the high price of the lime and the cost of conveying it where it is to b dly wanted. A generous tariff in this matter of lime would, in increased produots, repay to the country the cost of fi< s i i. proving- the hnd. If agricult val and pastoral associations are badly off for a grievance with which to assail a patriotic Government, ihelooturer tuggesfced that they unite, in An energetic way, in a firm and undeniable demand that tUe Uovewsraenfc railways be legitimately usedfovcftwyiugoheap lime to the limelesd dtalricts instead of fanning l empty trucks up and down through tho eottn* try. Dr Griffith*, in bis "Treats o'rt Manul'es," IB9g, gives felie following rule fas applying periodic dressings of lime to (toils :-J "For heavy soils use caustc lirfle. " For light soils use carbonate of lime; , " For so Is rich in organic matter use, Caustic lime "For soils poor in organic matter use eafbdnate of lime." Dr Griffiths's "caustic lime" io whai we cali slaked lime, and bis '• carbonate of lime" is of: course, raw limestone. Gas lime— the lime" which has been used for purifying coal gas at) the gas works— is another kind of lime m,anure. Its value is very varied, according to the proportion of its constituents. Sometimes, indeed — when it contains much sulphite and sulphide of lime— it is positively injurious to .plants. Free exposure to the air, with an occasional turning over to bring up fresh surfaces, will gradually remove this poisdnous quality by oxidising the injurious compounds named into sulphate of lime, which is to some degree beneficial and (lik-i the poisonous compounds)

Soluble in water. C4as lime also contains a considerable proportion of slaked lime, ranging from 12 to 40 per cent. ; and this portion of it does not differ in any way from ordinary slaked lime. After exposure to the air till all the sulphits and sulphide have been converted into sulphate, there will be from 15 to 40 per c^nt. of that salt present. The manure in this state should have a market value of, say, l£d per unit for its slacked lime and 2d per unit for its sulphate, thus making up a value ranging from 5s to 10a per ton at a short distance from the farm. It is obvious, however, that this form of manure would not stand much expense in carriage.

In recounting the benefits of lime, either as carbonate or slaked (in small quantity, and well distributed in the soil in the latter case), we must not overlook the very important part that it plays in affording a nidus to the nitric acid microbe and other acid-producing fermentation microbes. To the action of these microscopic organsims is due the production of the nitrates of the soil. Their raw material is the nitrogenous organic matter, chiefly plant deb'is. The nitrogen contained in this would lie dormant in the soil if it we:C not for the labours of these minute germs. It is their function to convert it through two, or perhaps three, stages into nitric acid ; but they cannot do so unless the nitric acid at the moment of production gets some basic or alkaline substance with wbich to unite so as to neutral'se itself. Such a substance it gets inlime — nitrate of lime — a valuable fertiliser being the result of the union. In the absence of lime, or conjointly With it, a weak salt of potash, such as the carbonate of wood ashes, would serve the same purpose, nitrate of potash being'formed in this ease. In a former lecture the formation of nitrate of potash in the soil in some parts of India, Syria, Egypt, and other warm old populous countries was accounted for by thin kind of microbe action on dead nitrogenous matter in the presence of these alkalies.

At the close of the lecture the students, as usual, adjourned to the laboratory, where preparations had been made for making and exhibiting the properties of carbonic acid gas, and for testing a solution of superphosphate for its soluble constituents.

The members of the class in 20 groups of two or three, guided by half a dozen of the more experienced in such work, performed these experiments themselves from their notes taken in the lecture room during the rehearsal of the processes by the lecturer. A pr> posal is made to constitute a laboratory class for three or four months next session for practical work in the analysis of soil, water, lwnestones, guanos, superphosphate', &c, and for practice in the fitting up of apparatus for teaching the subject. Au effort will be made t r ) get from the Minister for Lands travelling facilities to enable farmers' gons and others engaged in agriculture to attend the course. The next lecture will be on " Magnesia and Iron in the Soil and Crops."