Sept. 1894.] 



GENERAL AGEICULTUKAL NOTES. 



63 



can be counted little less than remarkable. Taken by them- 

 selves they seem to indicate that wheat-raising is at times liable 

 to an extraordinary fatality. la actual fact, the peculiar cir- 

 cumstances of the Colony, as much certainly as seasonal varia- 

 tions, furnish the explanation of the anomalies of the annual 

 wheat returns. 



For years past the mines, the northern plantations, and 

 the rapidly growing towns of the Colony, to say nothing of 

 railways and other public works in progress, created a de- 

 mand for hay, maize, and provender generally, that Queensland 

 farmers have only very recently been able to supply. Mr. 

 Shelton says that it may be said in strict trath that, 

 outside of the sugar plantations and the small fruit-growing 

 districts along the coast, the great end of Queensland farm- 

 ing has been the production of liorse-feed. In a country 

 ranking with the first in the abundance, cheapness, and 

 excellent quality of its natural herbage, hay in all its forms 

 has found the best market in the world. The effect of all 

 this upon the wheat crop has been precisely what might be 

 expected, and what the statistics show. On the first appear- 

 ance of rustiness in the crop, or on the slightest provocation in 

 the shape of threatened drought, the mower was put at work 

 and the wheat crop was sent to market as hay. In any event 

 the crop was worth nearly or quite as much in the condition of 

 hay as it would fetch when allowed to ripen into grain, and 

 there were fewer risks in the hay crop, and less labour and 

 simpler machinery were required to harvest it. The temptation 

 thus to convert the wheat crop into horse provender was irre- 

 sistible, and the farmer who succumbed to it had the soundest 

 of business reasons for the course he took. 



It is only in the light of these facts that the history of the 

 wheat crop in Queensland can be intelligibly read. For- 

 tunately for the branch of agriculture under consideration, old 

 things have passed away never to return. The harvest of the 

 wheat fields of the future will, it is said, be wheat, not chafi", for 

 the best of reasons — that the wheat crop is profitable, while the 

 hay crop is not. Farmers have come to know the capabilities 

 of their soils, and by observation during bad and good years 

 they have accumulated a stock of experimental knowledge of 

 varieties, times of seeding, and methods of cultivation that are 

 certain to stand them in good stead in the years to come. 



Nicotine for Sheep-scab. 



The South American Journal states that a new industry is 

 being opened up in France in the manufacture of an essence of 

 nicotine for sale to sheep farmers in South America. As is well 



