PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION G. V3} 
to provide for these wheats a full supply of available substances 
for nutrition, and accordingly to add a fair dressing of soluble 
phosphates. I cannot find that the extremely light dressings 
here and there used are as profitable as a medium dressing of, 
say, 1} cwts. to 2 cwts. per acre. In the experiments I have 
mentioned, the gain from the use of the second hundredweight 
of superphosphate was 4 bushels 7 lbs. per acre, 2.e., by an 
expenditure of 4s. 6d. per acre the value returned was 10s. 84d., 
the gain proportionally, compared with unmanured land, was less 
for 2 cwts. than for 1 cwt.; in fact, the second hundredweight 
gave an increase of just half that obtained from the first, but 
surely 10s. 8d. for 4s. 6d. is good business. I would humbly 
advance the opinion then that it pays us to deal out phosphates 
in excess considerably of what the plant is likely to use in the 
immediate crop, for the climate warrants it. The phosphates 
are not lost, but as we are exposed to long periods of drought 
more or less frequently, it is well to have excess present that 
in favourable weather the plant may absorb excess of the im- 
mediate requirements, and so draw on this in the periods of 
scarcity, which dry spells undoubtedly bring about. 
There is considerable debate in the country on the relative 
merits of thick or thin seeding. The climate, I think, 
does not favour extreme views either way, but fairly thick 
seeding, which means about 1 bushel per acre, is, at least 
on Mallee land in South Australia, where I am _ working, 
to be prefereed. The plant does not lose time in tiller- 
ing, ripens earlier, and gives a heavier yield per acre, 
although the sample is not always so good as when the crop 
has been sown thinly. In 1898, a year in which the rainfall 
approached 17 in., the average at Roseworthy, 80 lbs. of King’s 
wheat per acre returned 24 bushels 31 lbs., while 40 lbs. per 
acre yielded 21 bushels 58 lbs.—nearly 3 bushels less. Of 
course, it is to be noted that this wheat tillers but feebly, but, 
speaking generally, this is a characteristic of most of our early 
wheats. 
Thus I think I have demonstrated that our climatic conditions 
require us to look more carefully to our practice in relation to 
nitrification ; to follow what, from a European point of view, 
is a very heterodox practice—the use of phosphatic manures 
with but little supplement ; to select the earlier class of wheats, 
which in other conditions may yield relatively lightly, and in 
the selection of them to favour those less liable to rust; and 
to sow fairly thickly. . 
Depth of Seeding.—I have in these remarks confined attention 
to wheat. But there is one other matter to which I would like 
very briefly to refer—the question of natural pasture on the class 
of country with which I have been dealing. The climate forbids 
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