lo Aug.. ipJ^o.] The Ovens River Y alley. 505 



finely sprayed with one to two gallons of phenyl to forty gallons of water 

 per acre, they will be sufficiently checked or destroyed to enable the useful 

 pasture plants to get the upper hand. It is for this purpose and in this 

 way only that any poisoning methods will be of the least use for St. John's 

 Wort. The concentration, used should not exceed one in twenty or be 

 less than one in forty, and the spraying should be done in warm, dry 

 weather. At 4s. 6d. per gallon of phenyl, the cost of the treatment, 

 including labour charges, should lie between 8s. and ,12s. per acre, accord- 

 ing to the strength used and the local conditions, since on some soils, 8o- 

 gallons per acre might be required for efficient spraying. 



The Dredged Flats. 



As is well known, in the process of dredging for gold, the whole of the 

 alluvial soil in the valley bottom, dow-n to the bedrock, is drawn up by 

 means of water passed through the sluice boxes and deposited behind the- 

 dredge which steadily eats into new ground. The water flows back again 

 into the pond in which the dredge floats and is used over and over again, 

 only a small supply being required to allow for wastage. The modern 

 type of dredge has a short sluice box from which the coarser material falls 

 and a longer one projecting further behind which drops the firier sand and 

 gravel on top of the coarser stones and pebbles. When the dredge is pro- 

 perly worked, a fairly even surface is left, but this is in the condition of 

 the sandy or gravelly bed of a stream and has about the same agricultural 

 \alue. Where the levellmg is badly done, pools of fine mud which bake- 

 hard in dry weather are left behind. In other words, the soil is left in 

 the worst possible agricultural condition, its constituents being sorted out 

 in layers of particles of approximately equal size, instead of being mixed 

 together as they should be in a good soil. 



Even where care is taken to deposit the fine material on the surface, the 

 land is left in a condition useless either for grazing or cultivation. In the 

 Ovens River Valley, the deeper layers consist of sand, gravel and rounded 

 water worn stones covered, for the most part, by a layer of fine alluvial 

 and humus soil varying in thickness from a fev/ inches to one or more feet. 

 This surface layer is entirely lost in the process of dredging. Hence, 

 without special treatment too costly to be worth consideration, it will not 

 be capable of supporting good pasture plants for generations to come. A 

 few fodder plants, such as Bird's-foot Trefoil and some of the less useful 

 grasses., might gain a precarious foothold, but would ultimately be sup- 

 pressed by St. John's Wort and other weeds. As the pasture yield would 

 be trifling and cultivation out of the question, it would not pay to keep the 

 weeds down. 



Other countries are actively engaged in adding to the agricultural land 

 by reclaiming swamps, bogs, sand-flats, &c., whereas Victoria is dredging^ 

 away some of her best agricultural land such as is found in the alluvial 

 soil of valley bottoms. It must be remembered, that gold dredging can 

 only be done once, and is a temporary occupation. Agriculture is a per- 

 manent occupation. 



The only profitable use to which the dredged flats could be put would 

 be to use them for forestry purposes and the Bright district is admirably 

 suited for the growth of coniferous wood. The planting of trees could take 

 place immediately behind dredges while the soil is still moist, loose and 

 Avatered with what is practically a nutrient solution. There would then 

 be no need for clearing or cutting weeds around the voung trees, and as. 



