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ought to be done, and as he would like to do them, if he be a 

 man with his heart in his work. Let us by all means have a 

 fully-equipped Agricultural College (and I may say here that I 

 deeply regret to hear that it is proposed to reduce the salary which 

 has hitherto been offered to the principal of RoFeworthy College), 

 but in addition to that, we want a thoroughly trained scientific 

 staff to deal with the problems which face the agriculturist. Such 

 a staff is at present maintained by the New South Wales 

 Government, and one only needs to glance through the pages of 

 the New South Wales " Agricultural Gazette" to see what mag- 

 nificent work is being don^ there. But the conditions as to 

 climate and soil which exist in New South Wales do not exist here, 

 and if the resources of this State are to be developed to their 

 utmost extent, we must have similar work done here. 



Can anyone doubt that had there been a trained scientific 

 staff to report on the conditions which would be likely to prevail 

 at Renmark many failures and the loss of much money, with its 

 consequent distress, would have been prevented ? Professor 

 Lowrie in his report on the condition of things at Renmark is, 

 as becomes a Scotchman, sufficiently cautious, but it is perfectly 

 obvious that, although with the data at present at our disposal, 

 all failures are not explained, yet a very large percentage of 

 them were due partly to a deficiency of nitrogen and phosphates 

 in the soil, and partly to the deleterious action of the alkaline 

 residues left by the evaporation of the irrigation water upon the 

 roots of the trees. Had a thorough examination been made 

 boforehand the experiments would either never have been made 

 or would have been made under totally different conditions as to 

 drainage and the supply of manure to the soil. 



Besides the more purely chemical and biological questions to 

 which I have given prominence, there are others of equal import- 

 ance which need attention. Entomology, the original pathology 

 of plant diseases, the diseases of wine, the relation of birds to 

 insect life, and rural engineering are all urgently claiming atten- 

 tion. Some of you will remember a matter brought under the 

 notice of the Society by Mr. Tepper a short time ago. He stated 

 that in his boyhood galls were exceedingly scarce on our wattles 

 and forest trees, whereas now it is a matter of difficulty to find 

 a tree unaffected. He said, moreover, that he had found that 

 parrots in captivity were exceedingly fond of these galls, pre- 

 sumably for the insects they contain, and he drew the conclusion 

 that the destruction and driving away of the parrots is respon- 

 sible for the enormous increase of the galls. Possibly the 

 evidence is not sufficient to establish the correctness of his 

 deduction, but at any rate the fact is beyond dispute that the 

 wattles and forest trees are becoming largely affected, and it is 



