astonishing," remarks Mr. Roberts, " hmv well they clu stand the 

 long hot season, when the scrub is the only bite that is at all green." 

 The herds are in their primest condition in December, when there 

 is plenty of pasture and the sun has put it in good heart. A threat 

 recommendation of Yatheroo and Dandaraga is that there are no 

 " poison lands " there. Poison plants ilourish near their boundaries, 

 but the stock have been prevented trom straying on to the places of 

 danger by being kept enclosed. "That is one reason why we 

 fenced to fence the poison out," Mr. Roberts exclaims. The 

 varieties of the noxious vegetation are rock poison and sand plain 

 poison. Rock poison grows in the hills and the sand plain species 

 near the coast. Before the fencing was completed, Yatheroo lost a 

 lot of stock through poison. Now Yatheroo and Dandaraga supply 

 the metropolitan butchers with a thousand head of cattle annually, 

 nearly all of which are trucked to the city. Sheep would be kept 

 to a larger extent if the price of wool were higher. In the present 

 state of the market, cattle pay better than sheep, and therefore the 

 ground is almost wholly reserved for the great stock. 



" We commenced twenty years ago," said Mr. Roberts, " to 

 make Yatheroo what it is to-day. We preferred to grub the trees 

 instead of ringing them ; not much ringbarking has been done. 

 The cost of clearing the land has ranged from 53. to ^5 per acre. 

 The inferior country is not ringed, as the second growth of saplings 

 that would be induced by the killing of the trees would, unless it 

 were checked, take greater possession of the ground than the trees 

 do now. It is not worth while spending so much on the poor 

 places as would be needed to get them clear. Then, again, the 

 suckers are very troublesome ; they can be killed by burning if 

 there is sufficient grass to raise a good tire, but that is not always 

 the case on the second or third-rate areas. You can ring too 

 much, unless you intend to look after the ringbarked land ; it does 

 not do to use the axe and let the ground alone for ten years. To 

 get the benefit of ringbarking it is necessary to complete the work 

 by destroying the young growth as fast as it appears. One way to 

 deal with the second growth of York gum is to get sheep to eat 

 down the young sprouts ; cattle will not touch them. The red gums 

 were the only large trees we had to deal with at Yatheroo, and they 

 burn well when they are dry, or if they are grubbed green in the 

 summer time. With reference to the questions tabulated by the 

 Bureau of Agriculture, which you put to me, I may say that as a 

 rule the roads of the Midland district are very bad ; most of them 

 are very sandy, and as severe upon the horses as they are trying to 

 the patience of travellers. An exception to this indictment is the 

 road from Moora to Dandaraga, which is being made by the roads 

 board for a distance of twenty miles, at a cost with the aid of the 

 Government grants of 505. per chain. We have been seventeen 

 years at that job. There is no room for settlers who want to get 

 holdings from the Government in the neighborhood of Yatheroo. 



