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is also grown for sale. The Swan flats are not altogether suitable 

 for growing vegetables ; it is not wet enough when the winter rains 

 are over. When we get more artesian bores for irrigation purposes 

 there will be a good time for market gardeners, if any of the land 

 owners desire to go into that enterprise in a big way. There is no 

 Government land available for this purpose, and no one that I know 

 of desires to sell blocks to introduced settlers who are looking for a 

 site where they can carry on intense culture. 



" Frosts are not prevalent and destructive. They occur mostly 

 at the end of June and beginning of July, and harm potatoes and 

 tomatoes. Frosts are only of occasional occurrence. I have known 

 frosts to come in May, and to be as late as August, but this is 

 exceptional. Fowls and bees are not attended to as a source of 

 income. Some poultry and a few hives are to be seen on many of 

 the farms. From my experience as to the chief requisites for a new 

 settler I should say that he should have plenty of energy and 

 industry, and of tough moral fibre, so as not to be easily disheartened 

 by difficulties. He should be thrifty, and have a thrifty wife a 

 good manager of household affairs. Of course sobriety is under- 

 stood to be an essential on the part of a selector without naming it. 

 A man well-furnished with the advantages enumerated should be 

 cautious in choosing his holding. If he gets a fairly good piece of 

 country he should have nothing to fear as to making ends meet at 

 first, and adding something to his income in every subsequent year. 

 As to the crops which he should grow, that would depend upon the 

 characteristics of the soil and climate, and distance from a railway 

 station, and from his market, wherever he maybe settled. It would 

 be a safe general principle to lay down on this head that he should 

 be guided by the practice of his neighbours and imitate the most 

 successful of them. 



" The lessons of local experience in the Swan district are that it 

 is cheaper and better to ringbark the land and allow the trees to 

 decay before the grubbing is done. When the trees are as dry as 

 tinder they can be burned off, and the lire will follow the roots 

 underground and remove them more cleanly than if they have been 

 grubbed. It" the clearing is deferred for five years after the ring- 

 barking is carried out, fully thirty per cent, can be saved in getting 

 the land tit for cultivation.' It is : necessary to apply manure with 

 judgment, as it would be easy to so enrich some naturally good land 

 that the crop would fall of its weight before it was ripe enough to 

 cut. Hence, although the use of fertilisers is to be recommended, 

 they require to be applied with judgment. 1 have used Thomas' 

 phosphate's on a crop this year that is growing and looking very well. 

 When it is harvested it will add something to the data that is being 

 collected by the Bureau of Agriculture to show which is the cheapest 

 and best fertilisers to use on certain soils, and the quantities which 

 suffice to obtain a satisfactory result on different kind of soils in 

 the various divisions of the colony." 



