AGRICULTURAL.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13644, 11 July 1908, Page 2 (Supplement)

AGRICULTURAL.

Th* Christ church stock agents have received notice from the Master Butchers Asaociatio stating that, owing to instructions recently. issued to abattoir inspectors by the Chief Government- Veterinarian, the trade will require that all fat ewes o tie ml at auction at the Addington Yards in future must be guaranteed free from lamb. -Ik is curious what the power 01 rediction of temperature in freezing chambers is doing for New Zealand," said an x expert in cold storage to an Auckland Pressman. If the freezing process had not been discovered probably hundreds of thousands of acres now in profitable occupation would still be bush jungle, railways and roads now an accomplished fact might, not even be thought of, and the btok of the population might have migrated elsewhere. To-day you see a fcttripshire sheep feeding in a paddock, six months hence it might have travelled tV London and be forming part of a meal on. board the Cunard bner Mauretania. A nice" young hen, preening her feathers in-the sunlight m an Avondale poultry run .this week, may voyage to London and be ; seieved up in a restaurant cr on a pafsenger liner going to Japan, and t(ie egg's' she laid before she departed will perhaps be taken out* of cold store in Auckland two years afterwards, and be praised in Dunedin as * those beautiful Irish-eggs from Anckland.'" The London Daily Mail has been publishing some facts about- intensive cultivation in France. It says: —"It is a common-place that in Franee by intensive culture' market gardeners often contrive to obtain £SOO worth of produce from an acre of land. The secret of success lits in-raising the temperature of the soil by placing beneath the surface stratum a deep - layer of manure and covering the Ijeds with "frames, which again are embedding in manure. By this means a temperature of 90 degrees has been maintained in January and "the asperity of-the British winter "air soothed and tamed. The - system is not, as some might suppose, a mere plaything, or an experiment. It r has been tried in France for many years, and in 1905 it was introduced at Evesham ;• upon a fairly large scale, with thjp'.result .that, according to a local firm, the gross produce of an "acre works out at -'£6oo to £7OO. The expenses, of course, are heavy, but, according"!© the same -authority, there is a good margin of- profit.VALUE OF THE BIRDS. Suppose the 13.000 kinds of birds living oit-.the earth to-day were suddenly wiped oufc- ; of existence ! What would that fact mean, to you? The city man would -say, "Thank-goodness, no more noisy sparrows !" .. The farmer would rejoice to thihkofhis coin safe from the small birds tfia.t' he .is now dtstroyiDg, and his chicksafer, from .hawks. But how long would' the farmer rejoice? He would miff , his. graih and . • The firstlhing the farmer would notice would be the thousands and tens of thousands .of caterpillars and ■ maggo s which fitid -food in abundance .and which know Hi> enemy in life. . . These insects grow quickly to maturity, ■ and, in turn,. scatter their untold; millions of eggs. The . first, year the crops would,, perhaps* be of fair size, although every pod, eviiy'ear, would be damaged, by weevil it . grub- ;■ _ ;jVitK the first warmth of the following i spring the' insect plague would break out anjfw. The grain would be poor and wormy.- From the ploughed fields, choked., with weeds which crowd every fdrrow, new terrors' would arise—mice woijld oterrmf the earth, the grain would be levelled,, and when the crop was gone" they"- would kill and eiit " one anttiier. livery well, of water would be defiled, every stream would .be polluted with their - bodies. Nature would strive to regain the balance; larger insects might 6tay hosts- of smaller ones. But the quick snapping of beaks, the sharp eyte w. the'\feathtred beings cf the air, would find J no S'abtitiCute. In just. bow - many years the end would come no- man may say.; but' came it surely would, ' and quickly.- " With every sprig of vegetation devoured by , caterpillars, worms and grubs?, our domestic .flocks and herds would perish miserably.- -There would bi no milk, no cgg!8 v ;iio HBeef, bo meats of any kind. Finally, Mother Earth .would "bow her head in - helplessness, and mankind would perish from starvation, or, for a time, eke oqt existence on a diet of fish. yet farmers, and orchardists in all countries arej by various means, gradually exterminating the birds, not -having yet realised, -as they: surely will when the work of - destruction has advanced more, that .the birds are really the farmer's friends, and not his fots. .-.' AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. Mr James J. Hill, president cf the Great Northern Railway, recently delivered a jcctiire on the JTuture "of the United -States, which, not only contained many statements of great importance to Zealand ; as a nation, bat afeo much q§' special significance to New Zealand faripers. : . 'He declared that there was every probability .of the population of the United States? increasing during the next twenty ye'Ars'- to tie enormous total of 130,000,000, attd "that within forty-four yeans the coun-try-will contain over 200,000,000 people. At- the present rate of land settlement, he estimates that every acre of public land will lie absorbed within: fifteen years, and- as the great bulk of unsettled Government land" is wholly "or partially unfit fori tillage, be, believes that in quite a. sheire - time the United States will not only absorb all its own agricultural .produce, but will; actually have to import latgfr and increasing quantities, unlers a better system of tillage than that in vegjfe JK>w is inaugurated. eavs:—"Only one-half of the'' Isipd in.priv&te ownership is tilled. Thatdoes not produce one-half of what theyand miigjit be made to yield without loping, an. atom of -its fertility. Agrioft&Eg ip ;the . most intelligent- meaning of,.tire is. something almost unknown United. States. We have a light the*: soil,. and a gathering of all itr can W made' to yield by the mppts rapidly-exhaueting methods. . Except'ii> isolated instances, on small tracts here- and thire, Farmed-by" people sometones regarded ae cranks, and at some experiment stations, there is no attempt tcr .deal with the soil scientifically, generously, or even fairly. In manufactures •we-hive come to consider small economies so carefully that the difference of a fraction of a cent, the utilisation cf a byproduct of something formerly consigned to-';the Bcrap-heap, makes the difference betw«n a" profit and" bankruptcy. In firming -we are' satisfied with a- /small yield, at the "expense of the most rapid soil- deterioration. We ai4. satisfied with ss^• national average small product of £2 7e' 4d per acre, at a cost of a diminishing annual return from the same fields, when we - might as wet] foure from- two to thffe times that sum."