AGRICULTURAL.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 12027, 28 March 1903, Page 1 (Supplement)

AGRICULTURAL.

STOCK SALES. The following list of stock sales should ba handy for reference: Albury.—As arranged lon a Monday). Fairlie. —As arranged lon a Monday). Genddine. —Fveiy ednesday, at Mundell's yards, and at Farmers' yards. Pleasant Point. Fortnightly, alternate Mondays. St. Andrews.—Third Friday of each month. Studhohne. —Second and fourth Friday in month. Temuka.—roitnightly, alternate Tuesdays. Washdyke.—Fonmgutly, alternate Tuesdays. ■\Yainiate.—First Friday in month. During January ar.d February of this year the Gear Meat Company has killed at its Peto=ie works an of over 200,000 heid of stock. There have bseu enormous crops of potatoes in some parts of Poverty Bay tins season. One settler has obtained* £55 worth from one acre, and some of his neighbours' crops have been worth over £4O an acre. As a:i instance of the . extent of the drouth;- and the failure of ths wheat utop.s in the Murfjjee country. Mevr South Wales, last season over 60,0J0 bags of wheat were handled at Mauildra railway station, while this year scarcely ICOO will hi handled, the bulk of which represents last reason's wheat held by fanners, and now being disposed of for seed. The United States in 1902 raised 2533 mi'.lioD bushels of maize, worth 40 cents a. bushel; 670 million bushels of wheat, worth 53 cents; 983 million bushels of oats, worth 50.7 cents; 155 million bushels of barley, worth 46 cents; and 34 million bushels of rye, worth SO cents. The value of the principal farm crops wa» nertrh--250Q million dollars. The crops of com. oats, barley, rye. and potatoes were the greatest ever known.

London, with its population of 4,536.034, consumes in the form of r;ew milk 52.164.331 gallons, or 237.110 tons, whereas in Xew York, with only three-quarters of London's inhabitants —that is, a population of 3.437.202—the requirements last rear ■were 92.804,454 gallons, or 421.358 tons of reir milk. In other words, the- value of milk as an article of food is not fully understood in London, as the supply only requires 135,492 cows to produce it, but in Xew York, where there is only three-quar-ters of the number of people, it :■■ necessary for dairy farmers to have 244,225 cows to obtain the necessary supply. The freezing companies of Argentina never freeze and store for shipment the meat of private*owners. They buy the cattle direct from stockowners, slaughter clean and freeze them on their own premises, and make regular shipments on their own steamers, or vessels with which they have contracts for the purpose. The trade has been reduced to so regular a system that there is no break in arrivals in England ; no storage is incurred on either side, and no stale carcases are put o~ the market. In 1901, 33 steamers were regularly employed between Argentina and England, and dming last year many new steamers were put on the trade. The autumn season (says the " Australasian") seldom opens as well as it is opening this year. Already there hare been good March rains, and the character of the weather is such that there seems a probability of the month proving most favourable for agriculturists and pastoralists. There were good rains last week, and if the precipitation continues a similar frequent intervals for another month or so. there is not merely a possibility, but a strong probability, of a really splendid season being experienced. The prospects just now are so good that there is justification for making every effort to bring the largest possible • area, under crop, ajd, in sporting lansruage. " going for a recovery " of the terrible losses that have been sustained during the drought. Mr Hanbnry. says a Home paper, referred to the motor the other dav as the

" farmer's hope." So conservative, however, is the British agriculturist that he has only just begur to realise the possibility of farming by machinery. Ke is told by ardent motorists that the agricultural motor will do all the work at present performed by his horses, bat his finances have not allowed him to adopt mechanical appliances up till now. A new •era appears to be in sight. Lord Wi!longhby de Eresby. Earl" Fitzwilliam. and other influential persons, have taken up the question, and are endeavouring to bfiiefU the general interests of automobilism and agriculture. Several small nr.il cheap motors for fanning purposes will soon be placed on the market, and we mnv expect to ses processions of unemployed horses before verv long.

The last number of the "New Zealand Dairyman" contain? a list of reentered dairy factories in nil provincial districts, except Auckland. Otago. and Southland. Wellington bass 44 factories. 30 for butter anil 14 for cheese: Hawke'.s Bay hus 12 factories, of which two are for cheesemaking: Nelson, sis butter factories and one cheese factory: Marlboroneh. two for cheese and one for butter: We<=tlan<l. three butter factories: Canterbury has 17 factories, of which nine arc for butter and eight for cheese. The largest output from Ml the foregoing is that of the Centred Factory, near Chri'tchnreh. amounting to <548 tons of butter during the year ended ■nritti March last. The output from others from 361 tons of cheese from the PaleSeld factorv. in Wellinston province, six tors from a small cheese factory in the same district. WESTERN CANADA. THE EMPIRE'S GRANARY. An «stt«nielr interesting paper descriptive of the votl and climate of west and north-west Canada was read at a meeting of the Royal CoVmial Institute. London, oa , January 13th. by Mr W. Is. Hickman. B.Sc. He defined the region he described, us the part of British North America lying ■west of a line drawn from the south end of Hudson's Bay to the northern point of Lake Superior, the whole lying north of the 49th parallel of latitude, and the portions which he more particularly described, between that parallel and 60 north, these parallels beirg almost the same as those which enclose Great Britain and the northern isles. The most striking factbrought out in the paper is that the climate lit western Canada, east of the Rocky is not at all like that it was to be. from consideration of the ■climaaV «f the northernmost United State*. Tales M prolific crops of oats, grown far north of the L'nited States boundary, were formerly discredited. St. Paul in Minnesota "was ones looked upon as the northern limit of wheat growing: now Manitoba supplies the standard wheat of the ■world. lli» extremist proofs mentioned of the erroneous ideas of the western climate are potatoes grown at Fort Macphersnn over a hundred miles within the Atctic Circle, and ;v number of cases of potatoes, turnips. bee*s. c-.>bb-iges\ celery, and cauliflower, sent down from regular market gardens at Dawson City. <m the Yukon, near the Arctic Circle. The *' west and northwest " of Canada comprises a block of ter--I'rtorv about 15CG miles square. From •nortfc to youth of the square and about"soo rn'iUs from the west side, tuns the •main rang* of the Rockv Mountains, and be-' tween this and the Pacific is a sea of -m"antairs. wirh intny fertile vnllevs. From The north-west corner <»f the square to the ."outh-east corner runs a wide depression, in which >ie* u line of great lake*—Bear. Slave. Athabasca. Winnepeg and smaller ones—in some of which one car? sail out of sight of land. This depression divides the great square into two triangles. The north-east triangle contains innumerable lakes and rivers, vast forest-, and so-i-alled T«Lrren lands, stretching awav to the Arctic •f)ee*r.. Much of this reiion is still un-■e-plored. In the other triancle. bounded ~iv the -Rocky Mountains, the rrreat-lake de--turssion. a-od the southern boundary of •c'anada there i> a great plain. Tin"'; i« ♦lit Canadian "v.ts-i and north-west." There are jereritT low ranges r,f mountains ir. the plain, but fes? do not «ffc--t its general

character. Four great rivers flow from the Rocky Mountains eastward across the plain, the north and the south Saskatchewan, the Athabasca and the Peace fiver, with courses from 1000 to 1300 miles long. In the eilreme south of the triangle, just, north oi the United States boundary theie are vast plains, almost perfectly level and treeless, typical prairies. Near the north Saskatchewan the country changes to socalled "park lands." 'The ground is slightly rolling, with here and there groups of trees and innumerable small lakes. Thesa park lands extend north to the Peace river, say 500 miles from the boundary, but with much more forest north of the Sa>katcbewan. "The soil of all this plain, bsld prairie and park land alike, is an excessively rich, dark loam of alluvial and vegetable" origin. It is usually almost as black as coal, especially in the park lands, where it even dries b'ack. and it is entirely free from stone. It looks like the highly cultivated, roil of a kitchen garden, and require; no artificial manure of any sort." "Mr Hickman discussed, in hi*, paper, the queslio:; of climate at some and suggested that the west of Canada, is warmed hv the Japan current of t y, s ru-ifi.. ;~ tl,o "omo -n-.-iV tW nnrHl-

■.tern Kurope is warmed by the Gulf strcim. so that the climate no more resembles tlist of Labrador on the extern side of the Co.-.tinent, than the climate of southern Sweden does that of north-e?.ntcrn Siberia. The isotherms, or lines of crpial temper; l .tu:e. 00 not follow the latitudes, hut run up north in a quite decided manner.. W-rm winds, called chitiooks, blow over the Rocky Mforut.-.ins and alter the climate Ml the war to the Arctic Sea. in such a way that snrimj begins in the Peace river country r« ertrlv a?, if not earliar than, it docs at Winnipeg. 1300 miles to the south-east. The cre.it plain extends southward through the United States, and somewhat similar climatic conditions prevail from north to S'ltith. with greater heat in the sonth. and also jrreaier cold. Cold storms .'.re "northers" all the way do-am the plain, but in Canada they are more usually snowr.tcrroj. in the United States more usually freezing " blizzards." The winters are bright and sunny: there is a gocd deal of snr.w in the north, and little or none in the south and south-west. The rainfall will appear to Xew Zcalanders to be rather small. On the plains in the extreme south it is light, from 9 to 20 inches per annum : ia the Saskatchewan counfry 20 to 27 inches : further north it reaches 36 inches. Mr Hickman ventures to affirm that settlement is altering the climate, in two ways, first by planting trees on the treeless areas they are increasing the rainfall, and second by cultivation of the land are diminishing the frequency of summer frosts. It is summer frosts which place a northern limit to cultivation, and he looks forward to the progress of cultivation actually driving back the limit of these crop-destroyers as fans Great Slave Lake or further. The natural resources of the " triangle," apart from agriculture, are very valuable. Coal

?s dug cnt of river binks in several places : in the Mackenzie district (in the north), there is n. great petroleum region : in the south-east a town is lit with natural gas ; fish and gaine abound. In four districts in the south o? the triangle (exclusive of Manitoba), containing 345 million acres, only 4£ million acres were settled at the end of 1901; 55i millions were reserved for railways. 19 millions as school grants, nearly 6 millions for the Hudson's Bay Company (all of course available for settlement), and the State held 257 i million acres. Manitoba contains 74 million acres (New Zealand contains about 6&i million acres, all told). Mr Hickman claims that Canada's western area of 419 million acres contains a larger proportion of good agricultural land than any other similar area in the world. In 1901 the " north-west " (which excludes Manitoba) grew 23 million bushels of wheat, oats and barlev. the population then being 160,000; in 1902. with a population increased to 250.000. the prodnce increased to 36 million bushels. (New Zealand grew about 20 million bushels of these grains in 1902.) The population is increasine rapidly by immigration from Europe, Eastern Canada, and the United States. Of 76.000 immigrants to the "triangle" in 1902, 37.000 were Americans. 17.000 from' the United Kingdom. 9000 to 10.000 from other parts of Canada, the majority of the remainder from the Continent of Europe. The majority tff Americans (85 per cent.) were men. evidently selecting places before fetching their families. There is plenty of room, for of 205 million acres of cultivable land in three districts of Assiniboia. Alberta, and Saskatchewan, less than one million are yet under cultivation; less than one two-hundredth part. The railway traffic has increased so fast that ' the Canadian-Pacific railway has been utterly beaten. Every settler is doing well: law and order, education, etc.. are well provided for: >and the future of the great western districts as a granary for the Empire is assured. The series of lakes in the great depression and the rivers which flow into them provide a marvellous system of water-carriage, which may seme day be artificially improved by a canal frcm Lake Winnipeg to Lake Superior. It new costs 7£d to rail a bushel of wheatfrom Winnipeg to the latter lake, but only IJd per bushel for the rest of the way to England.