534 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



knowledge as regards the best modes of again enriching the exhausted soil. 

 Farmyard dung was both insufficient in quantity and of poor quality. 

 Long dry summers, occasionally even protracted droughts, presented 

 difficulties which a new emigrant could not easily overcome without 

 advice. 



It is surprising that, although the Government has spent very large 

 sums to provide the city of Adelaide and suburbs and many country towns 

 with reservoirs, private enterprise has done very little until recently in 

 obtaining a supply of water from the bowels of the earth by means of 

 artesian and tube wells. The great success that many have had with 

 irrigation therefrom, making themselves almost independent of the 

 rainfall, now invites imitation. 



One matter of very great importance was some years ago successfully 

 introduced, viz. for the State to buy up large estates, which former 

 legislation had enabled wealthy men to gradually acquire, and to utilise 

 them (formerly, probably, only used for grazing) for subdivision and 

 settling thereon an agricultural or horticultural population. 



Instruction in the theory and practice of horticulture, chiefly in the 

 treatment of vines and fruit trees, is now given in evening lectures, and 

 on Saturday afternoons by demonstrations, at the Technical School of 

 Mines in Adelaide, and at other times at the Roseworthy Agricultural 

 College and Experiment Station, by Mr. Geo. Quinn, the horticultural 

 instructor, who has also been very successful in fighting the codlin moth. 

 His lectures have been well attended. The number of students at the 

 Agricultural College is fifty, of whom sixteen are enjoying free scholar- 

 ships for three years. Another officer is giving advice to persons who 

 have settled on the banks of the River Murray, and a third officer to 

 holders of small blocks of land leased in perpetuity, or with a right of 

 purchase from the State. One weekly newspaper deals with horticulture 

 alone, another mainly with it, and the two excellent weekly general 

 newspapers always contain columns of matter highly interesting to pro- 

 ducers. The "Journal of Agriculture," of forty to sixty pages, is a 

 monthly publication issued by the Government at one shilling for the 

 twelve months, for which officers of the Agricultural Department write 

 articles on agronomy generally. The reports from the Agricultural 

 Council of 15 unpaid members and 110 Branch Bureaus, containing 

 many useful papers read at their meetings, are also published therein, as 

 well as the proceedings and papers read at the yearly congress of 

 the branches at Adelaide, and of nine conferences held at different 

 parts of the State. Some of these papers, read on these occasions by 

 intelligent and practical colonists, are well worthy of more general, than 

 of merely local, distribution. Some of the common schools and some of 

 these bureaus have experimental plots, kept by the most intelligent of 

 tin if in inbers, win re seeds and plants of economic value are tried and, it' 

 found suitable, distributed. Experiments, probably more exact and on a 

 larger scale, are carried out at the Agricultural College. The Government 

 and vendors of fertilisers supply also, to suitable persons, manures for 

 experiments in different localities. To these ocular demontsrations is 

 mainly due the rapid increase in the use of at least phosphatic manures 

 in this State. The Inspector of fertilisers believes that only 700 tons 



