AN INSTRUCTIVE EXHIBITION.

Southern Cross, Volume 10, Issue 30, 1 November 1902, Page 6

AN INSTRUCTIVE EXHIBITION.

Ten thousand farmers (writes a Home paper) have seen the demonstration plots at Cork Exhibition, and among them parties from half a dozen English counties and from Wales. In England there is no such practical means of education provided by the Department of Agriculture for men who till the soil. The Irish department, in this and other ways, sends experts out to show farmers what to do. The English department shares out grants and issues belated pamphlets. Farmers here, in some districts, may go to look at the work being done by county council schools and get advice ; sometimes they are visited by itinerant lecturers; but this work is not well advertised, and they cannot travel at reduced fares to see it. Another difference is that in Ireland, if a man finds his crop attacked by some insect or fungus and posts a specimen to Dublin he is advised by telegraph how to arrest the damage. This is an idea borrowed from the United States. An expert may not be at hand, and it may be

only possible to save the crop by prompt measures. Neither county councils nor a Government department in England demonstrate methods of feeding calves and preserving fruits and vegetables. At Cork the Irish farmers find three lots of calves being fed in different ways. One lot is fed on fresh milk, at a weekly cost of 4s 6d a head ; the two others on separated milk, with substitutes for the butter fat of which it has been deprived. Their weight is taken week by week to see how this works out, there being a prejudice against creameries, because it is thought that separated milk is bad for feeding. Farmers go in crowds to see these calves. It is shown that those fed on milk gain a week for the 4s 6d ; those fed on separated milk and a meal mixture gain 121 b for Is 6jd ; those on separated milk and cod liver oil for Is B|-d. Other farmers take a keen interest in cheap appliances for making dessicated soup of thinned out turnips and small potatoes, instead of giving them to the pigs ; and for making jam of wild fruits—blackberries, raspberries and bilberries — as well as of garden fruits. They send fruit to the exhibition, and it is returned to them in jam, with minute particulars of the cost of manufacture on all scales. A man learns that with £3 worth of appliances he can deal with 601 b of produce daily on his kitchen fire, and with £IOOO worth he and his neighbours can turn out scwt a day from a factory. Ireland is poor, but farmers have travelled from one end of Ireland to the other to see this exhibition, at fares reduced by only 10 per cent. The exhibition, costing about £50,000, had been partially subscribed for when it was opened. Takings exceeding £20,000 have cleared off the debt and left the committee with buildings worth £6OOO. Profits will accumulate until the exhibition closes.