72 
Supplement to the " Tropkal Agriculturist." [July 1, 1901. 
vat.ion." You know that the farmer is not always 
ploughing his land. If he were to do nothing 
else but plough, he would not be able to sow any 
crops. There are certain times and seasons when 
ploughing has to be done, and there are seasons 
when the farmer and his men attend to other work. 
You are not too young to understand why some 
crops grow best during the winter and others 
during the summer. 1 will therefore give you 
a short lesson on what I will call the " season- 
able " work on the farm. 
There are few Queensland children who do 
not know what maize is ; only they know it by the 
name of "corn." Well, maize does not like cold 
weather. On a right frosty morning you like to 
get near a good fire, or, if you go out, you like 
to have a warm coat ou. But a maize plant or a 
sugar-cane plant has no warm coat to protect it 
from the cold, so, if either of them happen to 
have been planted at a wrong season, its tender 
green leaves exposed to the frosty air of night 
become frost-bitten, and the whole plant dries up 
when the hot sun shines on it, and it withers 
away. Then, such plants as cauliflowers and 
C'ibbages love the cold weather, and if they are 
planted out of their season — that is, if they are 
exposed to the bliizing heat of our summer — they 
will not thrive, and the greatest care has to be 
taken to make them grow at all. Then, agnin, the 
climate of Queensland changes. If you live away 
in the far North — at Cairns, Cooktown, or Thursday 
Island — you find that the weather is very hot 
almost all the year round ; so it is on the coasts 
of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which you see on 
your map. But up on the country above the 
Main Eange it is very cold in winter, even at 
Herbertou in the North, So you see that all over 
Queensland the farmers have to remember the 
climate they live in, and so arrange the time ',for 
ploughing and sowing. On the Darling Downs 
they begin sowing the wheat in April — that is, 
in autumn. Then the wheat, which loves the 
cool weather, comes up, and if it gets sufficient 
rain at the proper time the farmer will expect a 
good crop, unless something happens which you 
will hear about in a future lesson. 
The maize crop, on the contrary, loves the hot 
■weather, so the farmers plough their corn land in 
July and August — that is, in the winter — and, as 
soon as there is no more fear of frost, they sow 
the maize, and soon the fields are covered with the 
beautiful dark-green maize plants, which produce 
their golden cobs in the height of summer. 
Now, here is an easy lesson for you to learn. 
Remember tiiat all tiie common vegetables — such 
as cabbages, cauliflowers, carrots, turnips, and 
many European vegetables — are best grown 
during the cold winter weather ; and that sugar- 
cane, rice, yams, maize, melons, ' pumpkins, and 
other, wliat are called tropical, plants must be 
grown during the hot months of summer, 
I told you that the farmer is not} always busy 
ploughing the land. When his crops are sown, 
he has to keep the weeds down for the reasons 
1 gave you in your first lesson. So he stops 
j)loughing and cultivates the soil among his grow- 
ing crops in order to supply them with plenty of 
plant tood. 
Then by and by his time is occupied with 
gathering in the harvest. In November he is 
busy harvesting his wheat and barley crops. In 
December and right up to April ind May he 
pulls his corn. Then he has to dig his potatoes 
twice in a year, besides gathering vegetables. 
And again he has fields of lucerne to cut and 
turn into hay. And so, all the yenr round, each 
.'eason brings its round of duties, and the farmer 
who does not watch the seasons, and who does 
not plough, sow, and plant at the proper time, 
will lose a great deal of time and money. 
Now, having explained to you the necessity for 
watching the seasons, you can easily understand 
how a farmer may lose a great deal by 
ploughing and sowing too late. If he puts in a 
crop in June which should have beeti sown in 
April, he is a bad farmer, and almost deserve? to 
lose his time and renp a bad crop. And if he is 
too great a hurry and hopes to get iiis crop out 
before his neighbour, and so plants in April 
instead of in August, he is just as bad a farmer, 
and can blame nobody but himself for his want 
of success. 
Before we finish this lesson, I must tell you 
that all soils, jilthough close to each other, are 
not alike. I may have a farm of which the soil 
is rich, and deep, and warm, and sheltered from 
cold and violent winds. .My neighbour's farm 
has a stiff, cold soil exposed to the strong winds. 
If my neighbour and I were to cultivate our 
farms in exactly the same way, one of us would 
be doing wrong, and would suffer for our want of 
know.edge. If his farm is wet and cold, he must 
do something to the soil to get rid of the wet, 
and tn warm it. If mine is too dry and too 
light, I must do something to retain the moisture 
and to make the land less lose and porous. So 
you see that every farmer has to learn what to 
do to his land so that it may yield him good crops. 
Here are eleven more questions, the answers to 
which you can supply from what I have just told 
you. 
Questions on Lesson 2. 
1 —Why does the farmer not spend all his time 
in ploughing the laud.P 
2. — Name the seasons. 
3. — What is meant by seasonable work? 
4. — Name any plants which thrive best in hot 
weather ? 
6. — Name some that grow best in winter.' 
6. — Name the warm and cool portions of the 
colony ? 
7. — In what months does the farmer plant 
sugar-cane, sow rice, maize, wheat, barley, 
and kitchen vegetables ? 
8. — When does he begin to harvest maize and 
wheat ? 
9. — Why should the farmer watch the seasons? 
10. — Is the soil on all farms of the same 
quality ? 
11. — Describe two different kinds of soil? 
{To be continued.) 
