AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2805, 18 December 1907, Page 22

AGRICULTURAL AND PASTORAL NEWS.

A small paddock of ryegrass is now being cut for seed at the Sunnyside Mental Hospital which is calculated' to yield fully 50 bushels per acre. Italian ryegrass is being cut in the early districts, and one paddock of nearly 100 acres will be ready for threshing in the course of a few weeks. The recovery which the season has made in South Australia, owing to the splendid rains in the early days of November, shows how hardy and responsive the wheat pknt is. September and October were exceptionally dry. Thus far our rainfall is Bin below that of last year. It is decidedly under the average— nearly 3in. In the prefertiliser days an average of under five bushels ie all that would have been anticipated, feom such a season. Now iwxues

tme Adelaide Observer) we are expecting between 9 and 10 bushels per acre ! Good cultivation and > superphosphate have doubled, and probably trebled, the yield this year. As cultivation improves and more suitable wheats are grown, the average may be expected to further increase. The Victorian Government has received a communication from the commercial agent in the East, stating that a contract had s been signed on October 19 at Osaka (Japan) for the supply of frozen produce to the value of £110,000 to the Imperial Cool Storage Company there by John Cooke and Co., of Melbourne. The first delivery of . supplies is "to be made in March next. It is stated that the contract contains a clause that whenever practicable Victorian products are to be supplied. Mr Charles Harper, a Western Australian authority, advocates the use of sulphur to destroy red rust. In 'a paper read before a meeting of farmers, millers, and auctioneers at (W.A.) he said : — "Last year a crop of Calcutta oats on the Swan River -was attacked by this disease, which had made ■considerable progress, and would in alt probability have destroyed the crop. An application of sulphur dust, distributed at intervals, caused the rust to fall in a few days, painting the around red, and leaving the straw comparatively clean, and enabling the plant to produce a fair crop of grain."' " I milked my share of oO cows for 12 years. When I was a boy I -worked from daylight till dark and was kept going all day. between the milkings. Milking was a Test, because I could sit down," said an employers' witness at the Arbitration jCkrart ' at Christchurch. An Akura Native, known as " Sam," is* one of the pioneer shearers of the Wairairapa district. He commenced in the year 1857, and has never since missed a -season with -the shears. Se has -put in good work during this, his fifty-third season. He is now in his sixty-eighth year. j