658 Journal of Agriculture, Victoria. [11 !\ov., 1912. 



absolute failures at the bucket. It is, however, absolutely necessary that 

 prolific cows should be bred from along the lines of pure breeding, and 

 that instead of their offspring losing the milking character by being bred 

 from mongrel bulls, the function that is so well developed in the dam 

 should be made more and more of a fixed character by the use of a 

 pure-bred bull of milking strains. In no class of breeding is the influence 

 of the sire so well marked as in the breeding of dairy cattle. Therefore 

 serious attention should be given to the rearing of heifers, but they should 

 be only from the good cows of a herd, and got by none other than a 

 pure-bred bull. 



IRRIGATION IN THE EARLY DAYS. 



By A. S. Kenyon, C.E. 



Recently a paragraph appeared in the daily press that the first attempt 

 at irrigation in Victoria was made at Kerang by the late Mr. W. J. W. 

 Patchell. No detraction from the credit due that enterprising settler is 

 intended in disputing that claim. That his was the first system which 

 was continuously successful is probable ; but it was not the first attempt. 



From the very outset of settlement on this continent, it was recognised 

 that its peculiar climatic conditions ; its rivers — then known only as 

 ''chains of ponds" — with their intermittent flows, rendered irrigation an 

 essential accompaniment to the full and profitable occupation of the 

 interior. The discovery of gold and the consequent dislocation for the 

 time of the ordinary conditions of life delayed the advent of irrigation, 

 for the efforts of the station gardener, generally a Chinaman, or of an 

 occasional pastoralist, in flooding some paddocks by damming the creeks, 

 are hardly worthy of the name, though in Ta.smania a considerable amount 

 of work took place in the forties. It wais not until the gold fever had 

 nearly run its cour.se that the attention of the people was directed to 

 winning wealth from the soil by the less attractive but much more 

 profitable method of agriculture. 



In the Victorian Government Prize Essays, i860, Mr. William Storey, 

 in his essay upon the Agriculture of Victoria, says " Irrigation is pre- 

 de.stined to be a prominent feature in Australian husbandry, and though 

 It may seem parodoxical, it is, nevertheles.s, my impression that irrigation 

 will be more general, and will be earlier and better developed in Australia 

 than it would have been had its rivers been without drawback and fluvial 

 at all sea.sons of the year." Notwithstanding this and many similar 

 opinions, so little impression was made by the various efforts at irrigation 

 that Henniker Heaton, in his Australian Dictionary of Dates, 1879, 

 makes no reference to them whatever. Yet, in 1859, an extensive and costly 

 pumping scheme was being put into operation at Heidelberg, and in the 

 succeeding year an elaborate system was established at Adelaide Vale, on 

 the Campaspe River, for Messrs. Elms and Bladier. The following 

 extracts from the Farmers' Journal and Gardeners' Chronicle, a remark- 

 ably well-edited paper, will be of interest: — 



" Irrigation is, perhaps, the most important subject that can engage 

 the study of the Australian farmer. In this dry climate, with its length- 

 ened droughts and scorching hot winds, crops are often blighted and 



