DAIRY FARMING.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 340, 22 January 1861, Page 3

DAIRY FARMING.

Notwithstanding all the progress made by our agriculturists in their efforts to secure a profit from the tillage of the soil, a wide field is yet before them, the resources of which are, as yet, comparatively undeveloped, and without which we shall continue as a community to labor under great disadvantages, from the absence or dearness of many of those articles of consumption which are necessary to our comfortable subsistence. As a branch of agricultnral industry demanding attention, dairy farming is one of great promise, as well as of urgent necessity. So little indeed has it been practised amongst us, that it would be hard to find, on this side of the colony, a dairy farm of any magnitude, or one even devoted exclusively to the business. We have in the j neighborhood of all our large towns, it is i true, a class of cow-keepers, useful in their way, and far. less numerous than is desirable for economy and comfort, but none of them have any pretence to rank as dairy farmers; they are cow-keepers and milksellers, and nothing more. The supply of milk obtainable from their enterprise is alike precarious in quantity, and wretched in quality, and furthermore is sold at a price which places it almost beyond the reach of the well paid and the wealthy, and is exorbitantly dear when estimated at its intrinsic value. Cream in its varied forms, that delicious luxury of English town as well as country life, is altogether unknown. The limited supply of milk from this source as a matter of necessity limits the consumption. But no adequate reason that we are aware of can be given why such a state of things should be suffered to continue year after year, when every other source of industry is showing healthful indications of growth. The subject of dairy farming enters largely into the question so often asked and so variably answered, Will agriculture pay in Victoria ? There can be little doubt, we think, that if properly entered into by competent persons, this branch of farming would prove quite as profitable as any other, if indeed it did not in all favorable situations eclipse every other in its remunerative yield. Of the staple products of dairy farming, butter and cheese, the yield in the colony is scarcely appreciable, and forms no item in the general estimate of our food resources. Colonial cheese, the product of Victoria, is an article even more rarely to be met with than cream as an article for sale, while of butter, whether fresh or salt, the small quantity produced renders it unattainable except by a few, and then at a price enormously disproportionate to that at which imported butter can be procured. Hence it is that for both butte*r and cheese we are mainly dependant upon the supplies which may be imported from abroad, and as a consequence, we are entirely at the mercy of commercial speculators, and constantly suffering from fluctuations entailed by their operations. At one time the market is glutted by our importations, and the price forced down to a minimum, which discourages and keeps back the cq~ lonial producer; at another, as is the case at present, we are called upon to endure a dearth and deamess, and that at a timewhen there is little chance of colonial com* petition. During the last year the value of these two articles, of butter and cheese, imported into the colony, either from abroad or from the neighboring colonies, was little short of £800,000, halt a million of which was for butter alone. Now all' this sum is virtually lost to us. Being ior articles of consumption which we are quite capable of producing, it is just so much money paid away, the tangible usefulness of which it would bet difficult anywhere to show. As we have remarked, no reason can be r shown why it should be so, unless it be our indolence and inability to supply these articles ourselves; either of which pleas, to say the least of it, would be singularly disgraceful to our character as an intelligent and enterprising community. Eight hundred thousand pounds annually spent among our farmers for these articles, all must admit, would tend greatly to enhance the general prosperity—-not merely by the keeping of so much money in the ■country* but by the additional means it would afford of employing labor, and so in- ! creasing the demand for consumption.— Ballaratt Star.

Earthquake at Sea.—The schooner Progress, Ca.pta.in Warre, belonging to Messrt. Shimon and Son, from Rio Grande, with bone ash, which arrived at Plymouth, reports that on the sth of August, at half-past one p.m. in lat. 1.11 uorth, long. 28.40 west, St. Paul's Rocks (supposed to be volcanic) being 43 miles west, the effects of an earthquake were experienced. It appeared as if the vessel was lauuohing or grating over a lauk of'stone's. The plates on the cabin table shook, and al( hands ran aft, panic-struck, declaring that tb& ship was on the racks, which was impossible for there was a heavy swell running, which would have soou made a complete wreck of her. On looking over the side, the master observed that the water was in no way discolored. The movement continued about three, minutes^