AUSTRALIA 59 



1840 lbs. (five years old), and 1750 lbs. (four years old). They 

 were very quiet. The dressed weight of the two smallest was 

 1036 and 1026 lbs. respectively, that of the heaviest 1270 lbs. ; 

 the hides about 90 lbs. green. The beef the butchers pro- 

 nounced Al ; 2 to 3 in. of fat all over the carcase ; not very 

 much kidney and caul fat. 



" I have purposely dilated on this important discovery," 

 says Mr. Despeissis, " which affects the 600,000 head of cattle 

 we have in the north and north-west, and particularly the 

 half a million head known to be already in the Kimberleys. 

 Indeed, this matter is one which affects the whole of the 

 Australian tropics, where the cattle tick decimates the herds. 



" If this method of combating the plague is found successful 

 (and it appears to have been in countries such as Brazil and 

 Uruguay), its value to Australia would be enormous." 



Fixing Prices 



In these days of fixing prices, it is natural that one should 

 turn to history to see if similar experiments have been tried in 

 the past, and how they succeeded. 



In the year 1815, the British Government, with a view to 

 encouraging agriculture, passed a law and fixed the price of 

 wheat at 80/- a quarter. The law was operative only for a 

 short time, when, in spite of the penalty imposed, wheat was 

 bought and sold at 38/- a quarter, and the statute became a 

 dead letter. A little further back, in the years of the French 

 Revolution, price fixing was the order of the day, and very 

 heavy penalties were imposed on those who failed to bring 

 their produce to market and offer it publicly at the price fixed . 

 The price of wheat was fixed, the price of oats, and the prices 

 of many other things. Instead of having the effect desired, it 

 had the opposite. The low prices fixed caused production to 

 fall off in all directions, and products, especially wheat, became 

 scarcer and scarcer, until bread was almost unprocurable. 

 Every night, long before daylight, crowds gathered at the 

 bakers' shops, and when daylight came fought for the few 

 loaves offering. Children were starving on the highways, and 

 it was a common sight to see women with children in their 



