NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2355, 13 April 1899, Page 5

NOTES ON RURAL TOPICS.

One of the best things the present Minister for Lands has done during Agriculture his term of office iB the esin tablishment of the DepartSchools. ment of Agriculture. The various leaflets, etc., which are from time to time issued by the Department are of great use to farmers if they will take the trouble to read them, and I think it would be a good thing for the country if the Department would go a step further and compile a really good and practical text book o» agriculture, and make it a compulsory item in the syllabus of all our country schools. I am aware that the subject would not be of much value to country boys unless it were intelligently taught by the teachers who take an interest in the subject, and would endeavour to make it a useful and interesting one to the bojfe. A mere perfunctory cramming of technical terms would be of little use. but even so it would be on the same footing as many of the subjects that have to be taken now. It is a sheer waste of time to teach children such subjects as geometry, drawing, etc., unless they have * come natural talent or taste in that direction, and however much of these may be crammed into them they make haste to forget it all as soon as the} leave school. • Now \ the case would be different with the elements of practical and scientific agriculture, for : though the teaching by an indifferent master may be slip-shod and only sufficient to satisfy the inspector, yet it would cling to the minds of the boys more readily than geometry, etc., because when they left school, and even while attending school, they would see the use and the application of it, and some of them at . any rate would reap much advantage from \ the study. I have not much faith in the usefulness of agricultural colleges, because I ; know that a lot of young bparks are sent j to those institutions for no belter reason than to keep them out of inisohief for a year or . two. A certain number of the students at ■ Lincoln College take a rea-l interest in their work and their studies, but it is a pretty .expensive institution to keep up for the benefit of a few dozen young farmers. If, on _ the other hand, the rudiments of agriculture were taught in the state schools there would be no additional cost to the country, and surely of all the thousands of boys attending rural schools some few hundred would derive considerable benefit therefrom. Many farmers who would like to send their sons to an agricultural college have not the means of doing so, and I am sure they would appreciate an alteration in the present syllabus which would enable thoir sons to aequirfe a knowledge of the first principles of the various sciences which underlie successful agriculture. As time goes on competition becomes keener and higher farming more necessaiy. The Lands Department in cutting up large estates and settling people thereon is increasing the number of producers, and thus also increasing the local competition among producers. In order to pay their way and make a livhyj many of the tettlers who are paying a high rental will have to go in for the best possible style of farming, and as their families grow up and the holdings' become too small, their sons j will require more land for settlement, and how can the Department do better than en- | deayour to qualify these young fellows for ; taking their places by and bye in the army of producers and fighting the battle of com- . petition with the rest of the world? Those : who are paying 20 shillings per acre rent I for some of the lately-acquired Waikakahi i Estate will find that they must do somej thing more than scratch in a crop of wheat and trust to % good season and good prices to give them a good return. They will require to adopt the best possible system of I rotation and not trust to cereals alone, as they are restricted by their lease from indiscriminate cropping. If they dou't farm well they will go tc the wall, and a man with I mo« capital oi more knowledge of good iarming will step into the vacant place. If a study of the theory of agriculture will enable the rising generation of farmers to have a better ! chance of success in tilling the soil when i their time comes it is the duty of the state j to give them an opportunity to acquire that knowledge. The Premier says that his Technical Schools Bill must pass some day, I and if it does it will cost the country a pretty penny, and of what benefit will it be to the sons of farmers? Trades and handicrafts will be taught, but so far- as I can learn there will be nothing done to teach farming to country boys. The- farmer pays the biggest part of the taxes and is to get the smallest share of the plunder. The growing importance of the meat export trade from this colony, toMutton gether with the serious oppoSlieep. sition offered by the Argentine, ough' to direct atterj tion to the purely mutton breeds of sheep. j The taste is steadily growing in the direction ' of young, tender meat all along the lines. The two-year-old steei or heifer has pretty

well supplanted the four-year-old for beef; the pig of 1501b to 1601b has given place to the 3001b and 4001b" fat pig of an earlier date ; and now the taste for the eight months to year old sheep is spreading, as against that for the two-year-old sheep. Mr J. M'Caig, -a Canadian authority, directs attention to this altered state of affairs in the columns of the Farmers' Advocate, and urges the Canadian farmers to move with the times. In breeding for mutton, making wool wholly a subordinate consideration, Mr M'Caig favours the Down breeds ; but there are considerable differences, even amongst the Down breed", in this respect. He says : " An Oxford breeder would not seek to usurp the place admittedly held by the Southdown for fine texture and delicate flavour of meat; a Southdown breeder, on the other hand, would not claim to be able to produce as large a sheep as could I>© produced by ptfrhaps any of the other Down breeders." Mr M'Caig thinks for some time to come the Cbtswold will be the favourite for producing a good-grade mutton lamb on the fine wool breeds of the United States. But despite that he maintains that the Down breeds are relatively a much more important part of the wealth of the country than they were some years ago. The growing demand for early maturity mutton is bringing the Down breeds into greater favour, as shown by the steady importation of the Shropshire. If the establishing of a special breed of sheep for the early production ot mutton is considered a question of so great importance in Canada, it is certainly much more important here. "We must keep pace with the times, and export none but the most acceptable mutton for the English palate. But breeders are at work, and no doubt they will be prepared to meet any contingency that may arise; and if it is found that it pays better to supply to the English market a young, tender sheep of 351b to 401b than a mature sheep of heavier weight, the required type will be forthcoming. The climate of this colony admirably favours sheep-breeding, since we have not the rigour of a northern winter to pass through. and I for one see no reason why New Zealand uhould not lead the world in the production of toothsome mutton.

It is pretty generally known by farmers that land is moro or less ex- ; Doe* Dairy- haueted by producing straw fanning Exhaust crops, and that if some of the the Soil. chemical substances removed by the crops are not returned to the soil it will lose its power to produce j those crops. The question has recently arisen j in Britain whether the production of milk ; and its removal from the farm is not exhaust- j ing to the soil, especially when new milk is ; token direct to a fnctory oi to a town and j no part of it returned to the farm. Professor M 'Council was asked for his opinion upon this matter, and stated that he considered the sale of milk does not rob the soil of bo much phosphoric acid as the sale of cereal crops. It seems to me, however, that Mr M'Connell does not make a fair comparison in arriving at his decision, though 1 do not doubt the correctness thereof. He gives a table showing the amount of phosphoric acid removed by an average crop from an acre of land as compared with that removed by the sale of milk from one acre. He shows, for example, that an acre which produces two tons of clover hay is deprived of 251b of phosphoric acid, whereas he says that milk only removes 4-lb of the same from an acre. By that I suppose he means that if a cow was grazing upon that acre all the season and making the clover into milk the latter would only contain 4-lb of phosphoric acid, while if the clover, instead of growing into the cow'b mouth, were left aricT made into hay the loss of the acid would be six times as much. I do not understand that reasoning, but can scarcely dare to dispute the verdict oi a professor. This comparison is, I think, scarcely fair, because no farmer worthy of the name would continue to take off hay from the same land year after year without . giving any return to the soil, while it would not be considered such good farming to graze dairy cows upon pasture year after year without any manure beyond the droppings of the cows. According to Mr Warrington s table of crop constituents 30 bushels of wheat remove 141b of phosphoric acid per acre and 22 tens of mangels 341b of the same substance. Allowing for the manure supplied in a four-course rotation the net loss for the term iB 261b of phosphoric acid or 6£lb per year on an average. Mr M'Connell fixes the average yield of milk per cow at 500 gallons ! at 10.31b the gallon, and assumes that the calf is killed at births At an average analysis the 500 gallons of milk weighing 10.31b per gallon would contain 111b of phosphoric acid, , to which must be added 31b in the body of the calf when killed, making a total of 141b for the year. A cow is supposed to consume the produce from three acres, co that the : annual loss per acre per annum is one-third of 141b or 4 2-31b which is less than the aterage amount of phosphoric acic' lost to the soil in an ordinary rotation, and therefore from that standpoint the professor is right in saying that milk removes less phosI phoric acid than an ordinary rotation of crops Much depends,' however, upon the amount of manure applied to the root crops. Comparing the lo6s of phosphoric acid in f razing dairy cows and fattening bullocks lessrs Gilbert and Lawes have said that it is satisfactorily established that a herd 'of cows consume more food in producing an average yield of 10 quarts of milk pei day than is consumed by an equal weight of fatteu-

ing bullocks, and they put the- excess at onefourth more. An Ontario farmer, writing to the Farmers' j Advocate, gives his experi- j The ence in the breeding and Farm Horse, rearing of farm horse 3. The i general-purpose horse, ho ' says, was more in lequest before the daj's | when the railway brought nearly every farmer • within easy distance of market. While that \ holds good in Ontario, the need for the general-purpose horse has not disappeared in ' 1 Now Zealand yet, for there is a great deal of back country not tapped by railways yet. ! ; For the up-country farmer, a good strong , : type of animal with plenty of action is the most serviceable — an animal that can go in ; the plough 01 csrt with equal facility, and cover the ground quickly when on the road. ! The Ontario farmer referred to says the in- ' terests of the ordinary farmer are well served by the Clydesdale 01 shire horse, " the good { chunky block, with a clean-cut head, broad ! forehead, full eye, arched neck, two heavy ends and a strong, short middle, broad loins, wellsprung ribs, deep,. thick girth, giving plenty , of room for heart, lungs, and dinner basket, with heavy, flat bone free from meat, good : round, tough feet, whicb under ordinary cirstances will last a lifetime without shoes if kept on the farm." But the characteristics he enumerates involve pedigree and careful breeding, and that means a high-priced animal. Yet the farmer is better served and has better value for his money in a well-bred animal. Before- the average New Zealand farmer is* blessed with the horse which con- ' stitutes the Ontario farmer's ideal, many ! years of careful breeding will have to be re- ! sorted . to. The best way for the < farmei to obtain the horses ho requires is to breed and ! rear them himself, and a few hints thrown out , by the Ontario farmei may supplement local I experience. To commence witb the right j type of mare is the one indispensable neces- ! sity. " Then having secured a good mare, sire I as well as circumstances will permit, and ! breed early in the season. The advantages of ; this are manifold. For one thing, there will | be a good deal of work to do at 'harvest I time, and the mare can be utilised to better I advantage after than before foaling, provided I the foal is compensated for the loss of its j mother's milk during the time she is at work. If the foal is kept in a loose box with a little I feed accessible, it will soon learn to nibble , at oats and bran or hay, and later on it I should be taught to drink cow's milk, which I may be given to it with beneficial results 1 until it is a year old. Thf latter practice I is one not generally resorted to in thir country, but one which should commend itself to every breeder of draught horses who has to make use of the mother while suckling a j foal. The mothei herself, of course, must 1 be liberally fed -while rearing a foal, for the > drain upon hei constitution both during the period of gestation and afterwards is considerable. If both dam and foal are liberally fed, the farmer will have the pleasure of rearing animals that will do credit to his care and prove profitable, whether kept for the farm~br sold in the open market. i Six months ago I referred to a paragraph in an old American work A Few Potato on farming which says that Items. it is a mistake to mould up j potatoes, and I promised to ! leave a few rows without being moulded up jin order to test the statement. I recently dug the plot ■ and so far as I can see there I i». no difference whatever in the yield of the j rows which ■ were moulded and those which were not. The crop was very heavy, and 1 tho tubers were so large and numerous that they were pushing each other out of ground, and in the case of the unmouklcd rows the top tubers got burnt green as tho shaws died ' off though I planted them deeply to avoid J that evil. In a plot of good land, about ; one-tenth of an acre, I made four experiments ' There were 16 rows in the plot, and four rows 1 were planted by laying the sets on the sur- ] face of the ground. On the sets I laid a few inches of well-rotted manure and on that six , inches of soil from a trench beside it. The next four rows were planted in the same way but without manure. The next four were planted in drills in the usual way and moulded up at the Usual time ; the last four ivere' planted deeply in drills but not moulded up at all. Fair-sized sets were planted in all the rows but the last, and I tried another experiment with that. I ran short of good rets and planted this last row ' with very small whole tubers no larger than an average-sized gooseberry. The sort planted on the whole plot was Breeze's Earlj Prolific, I and I can only say that the crop was so i good in quality and quantity that there was no appreciable or visible difference in the , various differently-treated rows. Numbers of potatoes weighed lib and many l£lb each, and few pig-potatoes in the lot. The tiny sets seemed to yield as well as any of the good sets, and the absence of any moulding up seemed to have no effect upon the yield, the only drawback was, aB 1 have said, that m%ny of the tubers were sun-greened. I should say the plot yielded at the rate of 15 tons per , acre. I cannot say exactly as to the yield, . but I began digging them for the table 10 days before Christmas, and after nearly four months' steady consumption have just lifted I seven full sacks of good table tubers and one sack of small ones. .If any difference, the j best shaped potatoes were those grown on the [ lazy-bed plan — namely, laid on the surface and covered with soil. That promotes drainage in a wet season such as th« last, and

drainage ensures warmth in the soil, therefor^ those on the lazy-bed were earlier. ; AGRICOLA.