Weeding Contracts. 143 



soils altogether cease to absorb either air or mois- 

 ture after a time, or having absorbed them remain 

 too retentive. 



"Burying in" When weeding has, from one 

 cause or other been long neglected, and the weeds 

 have got beyond control, and are high and dense, 

 this method of disposing of them may be adopted 

 with advantage ; a wide, shallow pit being made, 

 and all the weeds for several feet round being dug 

 into it and covered over. 



A not uncommon, and in many respects a most 

 advantageous practice, is to give out weeding con- 

 tracts to canganies, or native overseers, at so much 

 per acre per month. In these cases the contractor 

 has to provide and pay his own labourers, and is 

 usually bound to weed over the land let out to him 

 once 'a month. On clean forest land, where this 

 system has been in vogue from the first, the cost is 

 often as low as from one to two shillings an acre ; 

 but on old estates, which have been allowed at one 

 time 'or other to get weedy, and are consequently 

 more or less stocked with seed, it will be as much, 

 sometimes, as 4s. an acre monthly. The great 

 advantages of contract-weeding are, that a special 

 gang being permanently devoted to the work, there 

 is less risk of its being at any time interrupted ; 

 also that the onus of providing this part of the 

 labour gang is taken off the shoulders of the 



