VICISSITUDES 395 



magnitude adequately represented even by the actual loss of stock. 

 Under such conditions the percentage of lambs is low ; those born, 

 moreover, are small in frame and meagre in condition. The clip is 

 light in weight and poor in quality. The surviving young stock of 

 such a season never become first-rate animals, the least well-woolled 

 seeming to survive. Such years, in fact, leave a corporate mark in 

 a flock in the same way as a severe illness can be noted in the nails 

 and teeth. The survivors of a bad winter can be picked out as weedy, 

 ill-grown beasts, not only as two-tooths, but until by process of time 

 they pass out of the flock. Meteorological conditions affect a flock as 

 vintages are affected ; as connoisseurs in wine talk of Comet port and 

 vintages of such and such dates, shepherds can tell from the general 

 appearance of stock the conditions obtaining prior to its birth. 



It is, however, an ill wind that blows no good. The very weather 

 that had poisoned the flock with rank grass had suited perfectly the 

 first crop of turnips, swedes, and red clover attempted on pumiceous 

 ground. I had always hoped that something might be made to grow 

 on the trough of the run, which had, at the revaluation of Tutira 

 prior to the coming of the Eoyal Commission, been valued at 5s. 

 an acre freehold. Instantly, therefore, upon signature of the lease, 

 operations had been started. A patch of a hundred acres was fenced, 

 the stunted bracken burnt off, the manuka fallen, the larger stumps 

 grubbed, piled in heaps and burnt, the ground ploughed, disced, 

 and tyne-harrowed. Turnip and swede seed was then drilled in with 

 superphosphate, at the rate of one and a half cwt. per acre ; attempts 

 were made to consolidate the light porous land by means of Cambridge 

 rollers ; immediately prior to the rolling, and after the drilling in of the 

 turnips, red-clover seed was scattered broadcast t>ver the whole. The 

 result of this heterodox farming was eminently satisfactory ; there was 

 a splendid take of both clover and turnip. The crop, certainly, was not 

 a heavy one, yet it was a marvel to such as passed along the road a 

 vindication of my sanity to the travelling public who had scoffed to my 

 ploughmen at the idea of any good thing coming out of a sahara of 

 pumice grit. From the hill-tops miles away its bright verdure showed 

 up an oasis of green in the desert of fern and manuka. 



It was the one bright spot in this unfortunate year. With the 

 station books showing a debit balance on the profit and loss account 



