THE AGRICULT 



URAL JOURNAL. 



395 



which is not here practicable, I cannot 

 give a clear explanation. On the hnd 

 under water, of his Doornkloof farm, the 

 potato crop ripens in the first week of 

 November. As a preventive of scab he 

 sulphurs the seed potatoes. The seed is 

 placed in barrels or boxes, and he puts 

 sulphur on the top— which quickly works 

 throuo^h the seed down to the bottom. 

 When the seed is lying in tlie furrows, he 

 throws a handful of fertiliser, reduced by 

 ashes, rotted stable manure, or earth, on 

 each set, and the advantage is consider- 

 able. A handful of ashes thrown on a 

 set will make the bunch of potatoes when 

 ripe leave the soil bright and clean. In 

 the days of that good old potato, the " red 

 rough," he used to get 100 muids to tlie 

 acre: Messrs. Styles & Ledley on one 

 occasion got 120 bags to the acre. He 

 thinks a few " red roughs " are still 

 grown in the Byrne district. 



Buckwheat. 



From September till April Mr. Nichol- 

 son puts in every month a two acre plot of 

 this useful fodder. It is his great stand- 

 by for pigs, and is rirst-class for poultry 

 of which he has a large lot. 



Pigs. 



" I keep about 250 pigs. Yorkshire 

 Whites are what I prefer. No, I don't 

 like the Berkshires because they don't 

 herd well. When there is grass my pigs 

 are running out, and a boy can easily 

 manage two or three hundred Yorkshire 

 Whites on the veld, or in buckwheat. Yes, 

 we spay the sows : it is common here now. 

 I was the second to do it in this district. 

 A f] iend, Mr. Harcourt, taught me. I 

 now trust the operation to natives I have 

 taught. The great thing is to stave 

 the sows beforehand — if not, there will 

 be losses. I don't trouble to make bacon 

 now ; selling by live weight at Durban 

 pays better." 



Manures. 



" There is no all-round fertiliser to ap- 

 proach good farmyard manure, in my 

 opinion, especially pig, of which I have 

 always a large quantity. But chemical 

 fertilisers are also good, and I am a fairly 

 big user of them. ' Odanis' Complete ' I 

 find very good, and it has this great ad- 

 vantage, that it is done up in half cwt. 

 bags. Nearly all the other fertilisers are 



put into cwt. and even two cwt. 

 bags, and the consequence is the 

 sacks get damaged in transit, and 

 quantities of the contents are lost. Then 

 look at the loss in labour in getting 

 the big bags on to your wagon, into your 

 shed, on to the wagon again, and worst 

 of all, is the handling them in the field. 

 It is wonderful how unpractical the 

 suppliers of farmers' wants are ! At 

 present I am using large quantities of 

 aloe ash — the Thorns aloe ; ' nhlaba,' as 

 the Kafirs call it. I am sending a sample 

 of it to the Agricultural Department, 

 asking them for an analysis showing its 

 manurial properties. When I receive it 

 I will send a copy to the Journal for 

 publication. I pay my Kafirs Is. a sack 

 for it, and they are bringinj^ it in freely. 

 As a top dressing for buckwheat it gives 

 first-class results, and so far as my opinion 

 goes now, I thing it is nearly equal, all 

 round, to any of the fertilizers." 



Cattle. 



" I do not take particular interest in 

 cattle. I consider this a fairly, but not 

 extra good district for stock. All of us 

 ought to avoid having summer calves, but 

 somehow or other a good many of us do. 

 I quite agree with what my neighbour, 

 Mr. John Marwick, said in his interview 

 with you on this subject. But the evil of 

 summer calving is no new discovery. All 

 the land about here used to belong to four 

 brothers, named Uys. They used to say — 

 ' You can cut the throats of all calves 

 dropped after November.' One of the 

 younger brothers— now in the Legislative 

 Council for Zululand — was my best 

 friend as a boy. I have, like others, had 

 my losses in cattle. In inoculation 

 against Rinderpest I was very unfor- 

 tunate owing to the beast we had 

 bought for that purpose being diseased. 

 Lightning on one occasion killed no 

 fewer than li in a clump. That, I think, 

 may be a record for cattle grazing in open 

 country," 



Ticks. 



" Ticks are one of the greatest curses 

 cattle breeders hereabouts have to contend 

 against. It is a very strange fact that my 

 Thorn farm Doornkloof is now practically 

 free from them, and that they are bad up 

 here. I am under the impression, and it 

 is shared by many, that the plantations 



