AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2310, 9 June 1898, Page 15

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

At a conference at Timaru of delegates from loc aloounty councils re small birds pest, it was resolvud to recommend the continuance of the present system of supplying poisoned grain- free to settlers, and also; distribute along rosvds ; to pay 2d per dozen for eggs and 3d per dozen for heads during December and January, and 4d for heads v during the nexb four months, buying no heads for the other half-year, when poisoning is going on ; to pay 4d per doz-^n for blackbirds' and thrushes' eggs, and Is per dozen for their beads. Owiug to the enormous number of rabbits coming forward the Southland freezing works are blocked, and no mora can . be received till the next c*rgo boat arrives in about two weeks. A correspondent of the Auckland Herald states that the Maoris in the- Taupo district are destroying the wild horses 'found there for the sake of the tails and manes, which realise from 2s to 2s' 6d per horse." ' Stores of sll kinds are exjar* mely high here justs now (writes ttie Tikokino" correspondent^ the > Hawke's Bay Herald). "Fodder ft>r stock is rising to^ famine prices, , oats' selling at 4s per buthel, whilst ebaff is hardly procurable.

No. 43 of the useful le&flets for- farmers ifsued by" the New Zealand Department of of Agriculture deals •with the trials made at the Moniohaki experimental station in the planting of potatoes, chitfly those purchased from" the Normanby Horticultural Society. Detailed particulars are given in regard to 110 separate plantings. At a meeting of farmers and merchants interested in the frozen meat trade held at Auckland on Monday, it was resolved to form a branch of tbe Chrisfcchurch Frozen Meat Trade Association, and a coaimitree was appointed.

A new allegation is made against Danish butter. In the course of a lecture delivered at a meeting of the Glasgow Dairymen's Association, Dr Bell made the following very significant remark on Danish butter: — "I should like to make known a fact which possibly the dairymen of this country are to a large extent ignorant of with regard to the composition of Danish butter. It is this — and I have it on the best authority — that shiploads of what is called teal seed are constantly being imported into Denmark from India. This seed when pressed produces a. beautiful, tasteless, and inodorous fat, which I am informed is largely employed in the "adulteration of butler. This, I think, should be inquired into, as the laws against adulteration in this country are being enforced sometimes, I think, a little too severely, while foreign articles 'of diet are^ allowed to enter the country without any examination whatever."