Statute Hiring, or Hiring Fairs 



15 



Mr Thorn corroborated Mr Crosby's 

 views, and in reply to the argument for the 

 coitinuance of statute hirings, that they 

 afforded opportunity for friends meeting, 

 said that better means of renewing friend- 

 ship was provided by cheap excursion trains 

 at certain periods of the year. Mr H. 

 Newby Fraser spoke of the evil we have 

 alluded to — that of the great amount of illegi- 



timacy arising from the indiscriminate ming- 

 ling of the sexes at fairs. 



There are no doubt some difficulties in 

 the way of establishing register offices in the 

 rural districts, but these are not insurmount- 

 able if farmers would earnestly unite to over- 

 come them ; and doubt there cannot be that 

 hiring fairs are sad blots upon the agricul- 

 tural sheet of the social system. 



HOW TO INCREASE OUR MEAT SUPPLIES. 



THE subject of meat being really one of 

 the most important of the day, we 

 gladly notice a proposal that has been 

 sketched out for increasing the stock in our 

 own country. It is contended by the author 

 that Englishmen will never take kindly to 

 beef in tins, however excellent its quality 

 may be — that what they crave for is a fresh 

 juicy joint from a well fed home-bred 

 bullock, and there is no doubt much truth 

 in what he states. It is also asserted that 

 the time must come when Australia will re- 

 quire the whole of its butcher-meat for its 

 own population, but the resources of that 

 country are so great in the way of cattle 

 raising, that we need not fear a scarcity in 

 our day, even if the imports were to go on 

 doubling every year. 



How does the writer propose to supply 

 the deficiency of stock which is yearly grow- 

 ing greater, not only in proportion to the 

 increasing ratio of the population but in actual 

 numbers ? He would, he tells us, go " to the 

 lakes and streams — to every place where 

 water can be obtained or stored, in order 

 that we may apply it to the land at the time 

 when it is most required, as a certain means 

 for transforming the mineral and organic sub- 

 stances concentrated in the form of guano 

 and other manures, into flesh-forming ele- 

 ments by the production of pasture grass. 

 This is, undoubtedly," he adds, " the cheapest 

 source of food for quantity and quality of 

 both beef and mutton." 



The writer then points to the alarming 

 decrease in our cattle and sheep stock during 

 the last three years, which he attributes prin- 

 cipally, and not without reason, to the 

 successive dry seasons, and contends that by 

 the application of water, mixed with manurial 

 substances by means of an irrigation system, 

 which would distribute the m.oisture gently 

 as a lightly falling shower, there would be 

 plenty of grass to support a vastly increased 

 stock — a stock so extensive, indeed, as to 

 render us wholly independent of foreign 

 supplies. The facts recorded in this 

 Magazine last year about Stoke Park, fully 

 bear out the belief that were a scheme of 

 irrigation, such as there practised, carried 

 out extensively throughout the country, the 

 lands would be greatly improved, would 

 support a very much larger number of beef 

 and mutton producing animals, and so tend 

 to lower the price of this kind of food. 



It may be worth while to recapitulate the 

 results obtained at Stoke Park last year 

 under Brown's system of irrigation, as we 

 noted them down at the time. About 430 

 acres of park and pasture land, when we 

 visited the place, were almost withered and 

 bare after the drought of the summer, afford- 

 ing scarcely any bite to cattle or sheep, while 

 40 acres of land under irrigation supported 

 120 large Highland bullocks, at the rate of 

 three bullocks to the acre, from August until 

 November. The bullocks receiving no 

 food of any kind but the irrigated grass, were 



