is too valuable, and so is the land ; enough stock cannot he kept to 

 make it profitable to wait while young stock are coining on. The 

 ground will keep nearly the same number of full-grown sheep and 

 cattle, which only need a few months to top up for the butcher and 

 bring in a return. There is more profit in the turnover repre- 

 sented in successive drafts of store stock fattened than in rearing 

 one lot of calves or lambs in the same time. This will be better 

 understood when it is stated that the frontages to the Swan are 

 worth from ^15 to 25 per acre. There are none for sale, but 

 that is what the choicest parts of the various estates on the river 

 may be fairly appraised at. For the same reason there is no room 

 for settlement, as the word is ordinarily understood, on the Swan. 

 The district is becoming a place where city people are providing 

 themselves with country residences, and garden and orchard 

 blocks. Near Guildford there will be a fashionable suburb of 

 Perth. At the same time, as one of the oldest and most produc- 

 tive centres of the colony, it stands out as a place where the 

 experience of cultivators and graziers is valuable as a guide for 

 those who are going to newer divisions to do what has been 

 accomplished on the Swan. Even here there is opportunity for a 

 larger scope of work, for all the best land is not under cultivation. 

 A great deal of clearing and other improvements are being done, 

 although some of the estates are at a standstill. The Land bank is 

 not being applied to for means, because the properties, having long 

 been improved, are profitable to work, and, moreover, they are in 

 the hands of men of means. 



" Dairying is being neglected. If there had been no factory 

 system in the eastern colonies, more dairying would have been done 

 in the west. The factory system and the export trade of Victoria, 

 New South Wales, and South Australia are too well organised, sup- 

 ported as they are by natural advantages, to permit of profitable com- 

 petition. The butter made by the process of refrigeration on a 

 wholesale scale, and of the best quality shipped to Western Aus- 

 tralia in cool chambers and carefully packed, hardly admits of 

 profitable local competition. The land that is well enough grassed 

 to keep cows as they should be kept, is too valuable to use for 

 that purpose. It is more lucrative to fatten stock upon it 

 to keep up the meat supply. Even if land were largely laid 

 down with English grasses meat would pay better than butter. 

 There is very little cleared land of good quality that can be spared 

 from the raising of cereal crops. I do not see any prospect of a 

 change in this respect ; first class pasturage will always be wanted 

 to maintain the meat supply of the people. It is better to import 

 butter than meat, because live stock deteriorates on shipboard, and 

 butter, if it is properly carried, does not. Vegetables are grown on 

 the Swan to a considerable extent. The gardens are not very large, 

 but some of the crops are marketed. Most of what is sold goes 

 along the Midland line to Champion Bay, very little to Perth. Fruit 



