214 
Supphmmt to the Tropical AgrkuUuriii" [Sept. 2, 1901. 
blossoms, and soire stick to the stem, others to 
the roots, others again to the leaves and fruit, 
and as fast as the poor plant is drawing in its 
food by the roots and leaves, the enemies are 
sucking it out through the stems, branches, and 
leaves. Then the farmer comes along to help it 
and kill and drive off these enemies, and he does 
all sorts of things, which you will u>'derstand 
by-and-by, to destroy them, and all the time he 
keeps giving the sick plants medicine, just as you 
get medicine when you are sick, till at last he 
has beaten off the enemy, and the plants are once 
more vigorous and strong, and yield their fruit 
at the proper season. You will learn all about 
these enemies, and their names, and how they 
kill the plant, and how the farmers got rid of 
them later on. Meanwhile, there are other 
enemies these unhappy plants nave got. Why, if 
you knew all that seeds and plants and crops 
have to fight against, you would wonder how any 
green thing could possibly live to ripen its fruit. 
Frost is a great enemy of some plants, but it is 
also an enemy to insects, and kills millions of 
tbem. When a frost comes on one very early in 
the season, or, worse still, very late, the farmers 
sometimes lose their crops or a great part of them. 
There were two or three hard frosts in the South 
of Queensland in 1899 which came when all the 
■wheat fields were looking beautiful and promised 
to yield a very large crop. The wheat was just 
in the ear, when the grain is soft and milky. 
Then these terrible frosts froze the ears of the 
wheat, and killed them, and many farmers did 
not get a sheaf of wheat to thresh. They cut it 
all down and made it into hay, and built it up in 
big stacks waiting for someone to come and buy 
it. That was what an " unseasonable " frost 
did. 
Then there are floods. Most Queensland boys 
and girls know what harm floods do. Some of 
the best and richest lands on the east side of the 
Main Range are situated along the banks of 
rivers and creek?. After heavy rains lasting for a 
long time, the land cannot soak np any more 
water, and it pours into the creeks. These run to 
the rivers, which cannot carry away the water as 
quickly as the creeks pour it in, so it spreads over 
the low-lying land, and farmers have often had so 
much water on their farms that they have been 
obliged to leave their houses in boats and camp 
on high ground until the water had run off, and 
then they had nothing left of all their crops and 
had to begin again. 
If too much water is a bad thing, too little is 
much worse. As you already know, plants 
cannot live without water, neither can animals. 
(So when many weeks or even months or years 
have passed without any heavy rain, the grass 
and water disappear, dried up under the hot rays 
of the sun. Where there is no grass sheep and 
cattle cannot live. Where there is no rain the 
crops will not grow on a farm. And so all 
animals and phints suffer, and thousands of 
animals die as soon as the plants have died. Thus 
you see a"droujjht," as it is called— that is, a 
long p(iriod without rain — is far worse for every- 
body than a flood. A flood does not remain on 
the land more than two or three days, and there 
is always plenty of grass everywhere ia rainy 
weather. So perhaps a few cattle and sheep ar« 
drowned and all the crops are lost, but the farmer 
soon set to work and puts in a new crop. And 
this is one of the great advantages which you 
possess of living in Queensland. You can grow 
some crop all the year round. Supposing that 
big floods were to carry away all your corn crop 
in February, that is, the ripe corn that you were 
just going to pull and carry to the barn. In some 
countries you would have to wait a whole season 
before you could sow anything again. You 
would have to wait till all the snow and ice had 
gone before you could plough your land ; and all 
the wheat, which, in cold countries like England, 
Germany, and North America, is sown just before 
the snow falls, so that the snow may cover it up 
and keep it snug and warm till the warm spring- 
time, having been swept away by the flood, you 
would liave lost the wheat season and could plant 
nothing for at least four months. 
There in Queensland, if a crop is destroyed, you 
at once put in another either of the same kind or 
something else. If you have lost all your 
crops in February, you can begin to plant potatoes 
in March, and then you can next month plant 
acres of onions and cabbages and other things. 
So that a flood is not nearly so bad as a drought. 
"Very often a careless farmer gets a bad crop 
because of his carelessness. Let us consider the 
question of seeds. A poor shrivelled seed, even 
if it has strength to grow, cannot produce a fine 
vigorous plant, and anyone who sows bad seeds ia 
a bad farmer, and ought not to be pitied by any- 
body because his crops are pure. Ded you ever 
see a farmer sorting out maize for seed ? What 
did he do ? 
Either he spread the corn on the table and 
picked out all the largest and best-shaped flat 
grains, or he took the best-looking cobs and broke 
off the tops and bottoms of them where you 
often see single, round, small grains. 
Then he threshed the grain off the rest, and so 
obtained the largest seeds. That is what a 
careful farmer would do. 
But I have seen a farmer take corn for sowing 
out of a full sack without caring whether it was 
round, or flat, or broken, or withered. Such a man 
could not expect a good crop, and he would never 
make a successful farmer because, remember this, 
" If a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing 
well." And when a man or a boy or a girl does 
one thing badly owing to laziness or carelessness 
they will in all probability be as lazy and careless 
about all the rest of the work, and so such people 
had better go and crop firewood if any one will 
keep their axes sharp for them, because they will 
never make farmers. Why, you may not think 
so now, but farming requires move head-work, 
and more careful work, and more reasoning things 
out than driving a locomotive engine. And 
farmers should learn all they can by reading plenty 
of books on agriculture, and they should get all 
the best machinery and buy the best implements 
and the best horses, cattle, pig-, and sheep if they 
mean to succeed in their business. It used to be 
the fashion to look down upon farmers as ignorant 
men, but now-a-days the farmers are looked upon 
as the most intelligent of men, and the greatest 
