760 



THE 



AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



Gleanings. 



The death occurred on the 29th ult. of Mr. 

 Joseph Harcourt, at his residenee, Hill Top, 

 after a painful illness of about three weeks' 

 duration. Some reference to the late Mr. Har- 

 court will be found in an interview with Mr. 

 John Marwick, No. 25, Vol. III. 



An agent of Professor Lonsbury, of Cape 

 Colony, is collecting 20,000 ladybirds in Massa- 

 chusetts. One hundred children gather them 

 in, and receive one penny each for them. The 

 farmers, who never before appreciated their 

 ladybirds, want the exportation stopped. They 

 suggest a close season for the insects. — Daily 

 Express. 



According to the Chasseur lllustre,^ decoction 

 of one part of stramonium leaves to three parts 

 of water, boiled for 20 minutes and applied, 

 when cool, to the face, about the ears, inside the 

 legs, about the belly and coup, is sufficient to 

 keep a horse free from its insect tormentors 

 during a whole day. Stramonium is said to be 

 much more efiBcacious when thus used than 

 tobacco. — Pharmaceutical Journal. 



The following entry in the Calendar of Close 

 Rolls for 1312 shows now young horses were fed 

 in Edward II.'s time. It is an order to the 

 Sheritf of Oxford to provide maintenance for 

 24 colts, which the King was sending to be kept 

 in the town and castle of Oxford : — To wit hay 

 and straw, a bushel of oats, and two bushels of 

 bran daily for every four of them ; and to pay 

 2d. each daily to eight grooms with the said 

 colts. 



Intellectual work is almost as essential to ps r- 

 fect bodily health as manual labour. This may 

 seem an over-estimate of the fact, but it is not 

 so. The ploughman who does^not read and 

 think is neither so active or so* strong as his 

 fellow who does both. Just as rhysical health 

 is essential to the perfection of high and varied 

 mental powers, fo is mental activity a general 

 condition of the highest degree of pbycical 

 health. 



The danger of watering hf rses after feeding 

 was well shown in an experiment carried out 

 some years ago on the Continent, where a num- 

 ber of worn out horses were purposely killed 

 for disseetion, with the object of determining 

 the efEects of giving water shoitly after the 

 animals had consumed full feeds of grain. As 

 might have been expected, a large quantity of 

 the undigef-ted grain which the animals con- 

 sumed a short time previously was found to 

 have been carried a long way into the intestinal 

 tract, fully 20ft. from the stomach, and though 

 it had been there for only a short time, there 

 were indications that it bad already commenced 

 to set up an ii fianimation of the mucous mem- 

 brane, or the delicate covering of the intestines. 



It is said that the Duke of Leeds, who died in 

 1838, bought " Octavian," winner of the St. 

 Leger of 1810, when a foal, from one of his 

 tenants, having seen the dam drawing a plough 

 and the foal following her. 



Reports from Argentine show that the natural 

 pasturage has become " sheep sick " from long 

 continuous feeding, and that on some of the 

 ranches which formerly turned off the fattest 

 sheep it has been found necessary to break the 

 soil and lay the land down in alfalfa. The 

 damage to the pasture by overstocking has been 

 so great that the Government has taken means 

 to induce the extensive cultivation of exouc 

 grasses. 



A very interesting African tree is termed the 

 " whistling tree." In the "Pharmarceutical 

 Journal " we are t jld that a gum is obtained 

 from it. Dr. Schweinfurth says that as the 

 wind blows across its branches it produces a 

 sound analogous to a flute. This musical pro- 

 perty, wonderful in a tree, especially a gummy 

 one, is due to the fact that the base of the 

 prickles of the hirsute branches is perforated by 

 a certain insect, which sucks the gum out and 

 transforms all the thorns into little flutes The 

 gum from this tree is known as Sennaar gum, 

 and is valuable. 



A good idea of the value of road machines 

 was contained in a report supplied to the Mana- 

 watu Roard Board, New Zealand. The machine 

 was purchased by the Board on July lt»th, 1900, 

 and from that date to October 3rd. 1900, the 

 total length of roads trimmed and crowned up 

 was 65 miles 27 chains. The average cost of 

 this work was about 3id. per chain, and under 

 the old system the cost would have been 2s. 6d. 

 per chain. A newly-foimed road, 20ft. wide and 

 1 mile 62 chains in length, ccst 3s. 2d. per chain, 

 while the charge under the old style of working 

 would have been about 15s. per chain. It is 

 apparent that the purchase of the machine has 

 been an excellent investment for the Board. 



Mr. George Valder, principal of the Hawkes- 

 bury Agricultural College, has been offered the 

 post of Director of Agriculture by the Victorian 

 State Government. The offer is testimony to 

 the worth of Mr. Valder, and shows the esteem 

 that he is held in down south, for the p^)8t 

 carries with it a salary of £800 per annum But 

 New South Wales could not afford to lose his 

 services at £800 a year, or more. Mr. Fuller 

 went from the N.S.W. Department of Agricul- 

 ture to South Af r ca ; Mr. Benson, to Queens- 

 land ; and, more recenth , Mr. Gurney also to 

 the northern State. All of these men were 

 good, and their services should have been as 

 valuable to New South Wales as to the other 

 places. Parsimony and lack of encouragement 

 to really capable men is not a policy that pays. 

 — " Station, Firm, and Dairy." 



