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yields of the European farms should fall below those of the natives with their 

 primitive methods. 



For harvesting purposes the French landowners make universal use of the 

 mower and binder and steam-threshing machinery. I have heard Arabs 

 deploring the practice. " It left nothing behind in the field for the poor/* 

 they said. Apparently Australian complete harvesters have been tested in 

 Tunisia, and it is said been found wanting. It seems probable that they were 

 not placed in the hands of men familiar with their working. Apart altogether, 

 however, from any question of their efficiency in the harvest field, I am more 

 than doubtful of the general usefulness of the complete harvesters in a 

 country in which labor is always abundantly available, and in which cereal 

 straw is valued as an essential bulk foodstuff for livestock, in conjunction with 

 barley grain, and occasionally oats. 



FORAGE CROPS. 



From what can be gathered, it would appear that the question of " forage 

 crops," using the term in its widest acceptation, has always been an acute 

 one in the Regency ; nor, apparently, have any appreciably forward steps 

 towards its solution as yet been taken. Although the rank spontaneous 

 growth of land temporarily out of cultivation is occasionally cut and sun- 

 dried, good hay, in the European sense of the term, is rarely if ever made. 

 Nor has Tunisia yet realised that in dry countries the wheat field must 

 contribute its own share towards its upkeep in the shape of wheaten hay. 

 In glancing over various discussions that have been published on the subject 

 one is very forcibly impressed with the notion that where forage crops are 

 concerned the French colons appear to be particularly anxious to get some- 

 thing for nothing. The chief, and perhaps the exclusive, aim of Tunisian 

 agriculture appears to consist in getting under grain crops every year as 

 vast an area as circumstances permit of ; and effort and labor expended in 

 any other direction is not only begrudged but not even to be entertained. 

 On the other hand, the association of livestock with general farming opera- 

 tions is as consistently advocated in Tunisia as it is with us. Indeed I find 

 this association repeatedly referred to as the only economic measure calcu- 

 lated to restore some measure of fertility to soils exhausted by centuries of 

 cultivation. But if all efforts are to be limited to the production of grain 

 crops sold off the farm, how are livestock to maintain themselves, even when 

 reduced to the strict minimum of ordinary working horses ? Apparently 

 in the better districts some of the landowners occasionally have recourse to 

 oaten hay, with which vetches are sometimes mixed ; but even this practice 

 I have seen gravely censured, on the grounds that oaten hay could not be 

 grown without the aid of tillage, which might have been employed to better 

 advantage in the raising of saleable grain crops. 



