Scientific Agriculture. 



528 



[December, 1911. 



Only two days ago I received from 

 Jeparit, a drier district than St. Arnaud, 

 still more striking results. |The treat- 

 ment of the plots was the same as at 

 St. Arnaud, and the following were the 

 returns from the first five plots : — 



Plot 1 2., 3. 4/ 6. 



Bushels per acre 7 90 3 - 84 W60 lt'P3 3'84 

 Gain due to manure 4'06 — 9 76 H - u9 — 



To our forefathers a result such as 

 that would have appeared incredible. 

 To them 10 tons would have been a light 

 dressing. Now we speak of 10 lbs. as a 

 light dressing ; and the experiment 

 shows that 30 lbs. was a heavy one. By 

 the expenditure of only 13gd. in manure 

 the produce was raised in value by 

 nearly 10s, per acre. To me it appears 

 that this is one of the victories of 

 science ; a victory which may not indeed 

 capture the imagination, but which in 

 the near future may be worth some 

 millions sterling to these colonies. 



But the addition of artificial plant 

 food to the soil is only one of the 

 methods by which the land may be 

 made to yield more produce. Improved 

 methods of tillage are able tc produce 

 remarkable improvements in the growth 

 of crops. On this subject whole treatises 

 have been written, and it is not my 

 intention now to enter into details ; 

 but we should probably not be far out if 

 we were to state that by improved 

 tillage alone, without manuring at all, 

 the average of the wheat yields of this 

 colony might be raised at least 50 per 

 cent. Tillage operates in many ways, 

 but in our dry districts its most im- 

 portant operation is that of a water 

 conserver. In districts which receive 

 25 or 30 inches of rain annually, 2 or 3 

 inches more or less is not counted very 

 much ; but where there are only 10 or 12 

 inches a year, every inch has to be 

 regarded as of great value. What is 

 the real value of an inch of rain ? Has 

 this question ever been seriously con- 

 sidered? One inch of rain per acre, if it 

 were all used in the growth of wheat, 

 and none of it wasted, would produce 

 5 bushels, and 10 inches would produce 

 50 bushels. What is done with the rain 

 which falls on the land ? The answer is 

 that it is lost. Nine-tenths of it is 

 allowed to evaporate again into the 

 air uselessly. The soil should be a 

 storage reservoir for this moisture, 

 keeping it locked up until required 

 for use, So badly, however, is this 

 storage managed that only about one- 

 tenth of the rainfall is put to use. How 

 to make use of that wasted nine-tenths 

 is one of the problems science has 



to investigate on behalf of agriculture. 

 In part this matter has been already 

 investigated, and it was some years ago 

 demonstrated by the American experi- 

 menters that the loss of moisture by 

 evaporation from the soil was appre- 

 ciably less if the soil was kept stirred 

 by the cultivator or harrow. Thus, at 

 the Storr Agricultural Station, eva- 

 poration in sixteen days during the 

 summer was found to be as follows :— 



Heavy Soil. Light Soil. 

 Inches. Inches. 



Not stirred ... 1-66 T31 



Surface stirred ... T26 69 



Saving of moisture due 

 to cultivation ... 0'40 62 



There was in only two weeks a saving 

 in one case of two-fifths of an inch of the 

 wasted rainfall, which was equal to 2 

 bushels of wheat per acre, and in the 

 other case three-fifths of an inch, or 

 equal to three bushels of wheat. This 

 fact explains why harrowing a young 

 wheat crop, or hoeing between the 

 drills, should have been found by those 

 who have tried it to be beneficial. 

 This is a matter which requires further 

 experiment and demonstration ; and it 

 appears to me one of the most promising 

 lines of investigation which may ultim- 

 ately result in greater practical benefit 

 than a costly system of irrigation. 



But attention to the soil as regards 

 supply of either plant food or moisture, 

 is not the only method of* increasing our 

 agricultural wealth, It has for a long 

 time been known that considerable 

 differences exist in the prolificness of 

 seed, not only of seed obtained from the 

 same field or crop, but also of seed from 

 the same plant. Thus Burbidge, in his 

 "Cultivated Plants, their Propagation 

 and Improvement," quotes elaborately 

 obtained results from both German 

 and English experimenters. Dr. Gustav 

 Mark, at the experiment station of Halle 

 and Leipsic, conducted experiments in 

 the growth of beans and peas from large 

 and small seed, and measured and 

 recorded the development of the plants 

 in minute detail. The plants from the 

 larger seed were of more uniform growth, 

 of earlier development, produced heavier 

 crops, and a greater proportion of good 

 grain to inferior. The following table 

 gives the yield of grain irom ten plants 

 of each kind : — 



