1909.] Notes from Foreign Office Reports. 327 



Uruguay. — The Board of Trade have received, through the Foreign 

 Office, telegraphic information to the effect that a Bill is now under 

 the consideration of the Uruguayan Legislature proposing to exempt 

 from Customs duty machinery and utensils for use in dairy factories 

 established in the Republic, with a capital of not less than 2,iooL It 

 is also proposed that such factories shall be free of all internal taxes, 

 and that no export duties shall be levied on their products. (Board of 

 Trade Journal, June ijth, 1909.) 



Machinery for Vine Cultivation. — An international competition for 

 machinery for the cultivation of vines by motor power will be held at 

 Alba (North Italy) in September, 1909. The machines will be required 

 to perform digging, trenching, smoothing, and ridging up the soil 

 round the roots of the vines, and weeding. They must work on a 

 slope of not more than 20 per cent. Two prizes of ^240 and ^80 will 

 be awarded, and the winning machine will be bought by the Italian 

 Ministry of Agriculture. Applications and particulars of the machines 

 entered should be sent to the Committee of the Agricultural and 

 Industrial Exhibition at Alba, not later than the 1st August, 1909, and 

 the machinery must reach Alba not later than 1st September, 1909. 

 Application for a copy of the decree announcing the competition should 

 be made to the Italian Chamber of Commerce, 4 Saint Mary Axe, 

 London, E.C. 



Irrigation in California. — The Report for 1908 on the trade of the 

 Consular District of San Francisco (F.O. Report, Annual Series, 

 No. 4,227) states that irrigation has been a 

 Notes from Foreign potent factor in the development of the State 

 Office Reports: of California, and is destined to play a still 

 larger part in the future. Through its utilisa- 

 tion, large stretches of territory, once immense grain farms, owned by 

 men who numbered their holdings by thousands of acres, and support- 

 ing comparatively few employees, have been converted into 10-, 20-, and 

 40-acre farms, where the owners, with the assistance of their families, 

 carry on diversified farming, growing fruits and vegetables for the 

 market. 



National irrigation systems are constructed with the money received 

 from the sale of public lands within the States in which they are situated. 

 The Reclamation Service constructs the works, and as soon as the 

 actual cost can be computed it is divided by the number of acres of 

 agricultural land to which water can be conducted from the canals. 

 This regulates the price of a settler's farm, because the public lands 

 irrigated by these canals can only be acquired under the Homestead 

 Act. The land itself costs nothing except the filing fees of documents, 

 but the settler must pay his share of the cost of the irrigation system 

 in 10 equal instalments without interest. When the money has been 

 paid back into the Treasury it becomes at once available for the con- 

 struction of some other system. 



Wheat, Barley, and Hop Growing in California. — Experiments are 

 being conducted with a view to develop new varieties of wheat with 



