Dec. 1896.] 



GENERAL AGRICULTURAL NOTES. 



299 



The Conference agreed to recommend to their Governments 

 that a reward of 5,0001. be offered to any person who shall 

 first discover and make known a satisfactory preventive or 

 remedy for the disease known as " tick fever." 



In the absence of any representative from West Australia no 

 definite information conld be obtained as to whether the disease 

 was spreading in that Colony, and it was recommended that the 

 Government of West Australia be asked to say to what extent 

 the disease existed, and what steps were being taken to deal 

 with it. 



The members of the Conference availed themselves of the 

 opportunity to discuss the advisability of adopting an improved 

 system of branding stock, with the object of preventing the 

 loss, now sustained by stock owners, in the value of hides, 

 which, it is stated, amounts to 300,000£. per annum ; and they 

 decided to recommend to the Governments of the Colonies repre- 

 sented that measures for this object should be introduced into 

 the several Legislatures at the earliest possible date; 



Cultivation of Lucerne in England. 



Attention has been called recently to the considerable increase 

 in the cultivation of lucerne as a green crop in England, and as 

 the figures collected for the current year show that this crop 

 continues to grow in favour in many parts of the country, it 

 has been thought desirable to give publicity to the areas grown 

 in the several counties in advance of the publication of the 

 details in the annual volume of Agricultural Returns for 1896. 

 A comparative statement has therefore been prepared for each 

 county in England for the present and the preceding four years, 

 with summary figures for the small areas planted in Wales and 

 in Scotland and in the Channel Islands. 



From this statement it will be observed that the area under 

 lucerne in Great Britain in 1892 was 16 ; 583 acres, while that 

 returned in 1896 has reached 27,188 acres. Five years ago the 

 counties showing the largest surface then occupied were Essex, 

 where 4,392 acres of lucerne were recorded, and Kent, where 

 the area was very nearly as large. In Essex 6,706 acres are 

 now returned, and 5,940 in Kent. Only one other county, 

 Suffolk, grew as much as a thousand acres in 1892. Now this 

 figure has been passed in several instances. Suffolk now 

 reports 1,721 acres of lucerne ; the area in Cambridgeshire has 

 been practically doubled, rising from 633 acres to 1,253 acres. 



