2l8 AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA. 



operation between the farming community and the Agricultura! 

 Department has been estabHshed in South Austraha, but this co- 

 operation may be said to be double-headed : not only does the 

 Bureau system facilitate the spontaneous performance of plot- 

 experiments by the farmers for the Department, but conversely 

 the system of experimental farms enables farmers to see analog- 

 ous plot-experiments conducted for them by the Department. 



The experimental farms carry out two classes of work, 

 namely: i. Demonstration work on private farms, that is to 

 say, operations the results of which can be ])redicted before- 

 hand by the departmental experts, but are intended to be of the 

 nafure of direct instruction to the farmers; and (2) experimen- 

 tal work on State farms, the results of which cannot be fore- 

 seen, even by the technical officers of the Department. The re- 

 sults of this latter class of work may be shortly described as 

 Nature's answers to the questions put to her by the investigator, 

 while in the former class the worker aims at passing on to the 

 farmer the answers which either he, or other investigators before 

 him, had previously elicited from Nature by their experiments. 



South Au.stralia being so largely a cereal-growing State, 

 the work of the experimental farms conforms closely to the 

 exigencies of grain-culture. Hitherto this work has embraced 

 six sections, namely: (i) Wheat variety tests. (2) complete 

 z's. incomplete manurial tests,, (3) hay tests, (4) feeding-off 

 experiments, (5) potato experiments, and (6) fodder crops. 



In addition to the experimental farm directly connected with 

 Roseworthy College, there is a farm of 2,300 acres at Kybybolite, 

 on the Victorian border, where the Superintendent of Agricul- 

 ture for the south-eastern part of the State has his headquarters, 

 £!nd where general experiments dealing with the special agricul- 

 tural conditions of that district are conducted. Turretfield is 

 primarily a seed-wheat station of 1,600 acres, but 30 acres of 

 alluvial land are devoted to irrigation problems on the Para 

 River. South of the Murray River, where the rainfall averages 

 only 10 to 12 inches per annum, there is an experimental farm 

 of 4j6oo acres at Veitch's Well, and at Booborowie is another 

 seed-wheat station, specially designed to serve the northern dis- 

 tricts, and utilised at the same time as a training farm on which 

 town boys, in particular, may be converted into efficient farm- 

 hands, and, if they manifest sufficient thrift, are directed into the 

 way of ultimately farming blocks of land on their own account. 



Victoria. 



Werrihee Central Research Farm. 



In the State of Victoria, a large party visited the Werribee 

 Experimental Farm, adjacent to the railway line near Werribee 

 Station. This Central Research Farm, as it is officially styled, 

 was acquired by the Department of Agriculture of Victoria from 

 the Closer Settlement Board in July, 1912, and is only 18 miles 

 from Melbourne, the farmstead itself being about one mile from 



