xliv. ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS. 
direction. What are we doing? Do not export the bones 
of pasture animals if it can be avoided. 
(e) Cultivate and conserve drought-resistant fodder- 
plants. 
(f) Conserve the natural fodder. It can be made into 
ensilage, or, better still it should be cut for hay wherever 
possible. Dry hay carefully stacked, not allowed direct 
contact with the ground and roofed over, will keep for an 
indefinite period. Some Queensland lucerne hay 23 years 
old, was sold during the last drought. 
(g) Conserve the water,—in other words irrigate. We 
can grow anything with water and nothing without it, so 
that the conservation of fodder and of water are inseparably 
associated. Allusion was made to the recent successful 
conference on Irrigation carried on by the Engineering 
Section of our Society. 
(3) The Insurance idea. 
Having obtained knowledge in regard to the periodicity 
and intensity of our droughts and good seasons, and statis- 
tical information in regard to the fodder markets in and 
out of Australia, and other knowledge indicated, could we 
not follow the example of antiquity by making provision 
for the future,—by doing something to balance the lean 
years against the fat ones? Mr. Maiden pointed out that 
insurance offices have made elaborate tables as regards 
the incidence of all kinds of risks. Inter alia, he sketched ; 
a rough plan of a self-imposed annual tax of say (for the 
sake of argument) 5% of the net profits in,any one year. | 
The smaller the profit the smaller would, according to that 
arrangement, be the amount of fodder accumulated to the 
credit of the famine fodder fund. At last one would arrive 
at a time when profits would tend to the vanishing point ; 
the famine would have approached, and it would be time 
to draw upon the famine fund. In districts in which, 
