286 
SuppUmtnt to the "Tropical Agriculturist." [Oct. 1, 1901. 
I will give you one more proof of the lightness 
of the bad seed. Here is a cup of water. 
Throw a dozen grains of the good seed into it. 
Observe, they have all sunk at once to the bot- 
tom. Now throw in the same rumber of bad 
seeds into the water. Notice that only a few 
sink, but most of them float. An experienced 
farmer or gardener would not take all this 
trouble with his seeds, because, by merely 
takinf^ a few in his hand and examining them, 
he can at once decide whether they are good 
or bad. And when you are old enough to 
leave school and begin farming for yourselves, 
you will soon learn to distinguish the good 
from the bad. 
You have perhaps heard someone say : " Oh ! 
I will save the seed of such and such a flower, 
because it is so beantiful." Of couise, if any 
plant is allowed to go to seed, the seed may 
be gathered and saved. But many people, 
particularly flower gardeners, who do not grow 
flowers to sell, keep cuttiv;g off the flowers to 
put them on the table, or to give to their 
friends, until the blooming time is nearly over, 
and then they allow the very last flowers to 
go to seed, and this seed they save. When it 
is sown in the following year, they are very 
much disappointed to find that they do not 
get nearly such fine he;iithy plants, nor such 
splendid flowers as they dirl from the original 
plant ; and they wonder why this is so. The 
reason is very simple. As the plant approaches 
the end of the season, the flowers are not so 
■trong and large, and when they go to seed, 
the seed is veiy small and weakly, because it 
had not suflScient nourishment supplied to it 
from the soil by the dying plant. Therefore, 
bear this in mind : L it the best planto and 
best flowers produce the seed you wish to 
save. When a wheat-grower wants to produce 
a new kind of wheat of which he has only 
been able to get a few pounds weight, he 
carefully sovys it in rows at proper distances 
apart, and keeps it nice and clean, and waters 
and tends it ur\til at last it ripens. Then he 
goes through it and selects the very finest 
heads with the best-filled grain, and saves 
these for next year's crop, and by-and-by, instead 
of a few pounds weight, he has several thousand 
bushels of fine wheat. Had wheat-growers kept 
on growing wheat from their Own fields year 
after year on the same ground, the wheat would 
gradually have become smaller and the grains 
fewer and pinched up, till at last it would not 
have been worth growing. 13ut in all wheat- 
growing countries, there are psople who make 
it their business to improve the wheat and make 
it more valuable for food. However, it will be 
many years before you will understand how 
this is done, and I merely mention it to you 
in order to impress upon you the great im- 
portance of a careful selection of seeds. 
We were talking about holes being bored in 
seeds by insects, but there are a vast number 
of holes in the skin of the seed, just as there 
are, thousands of lioles in your own skin. Thesa 
holes are called " pores," and it is through them 
that the moisture of your body passes out wh«a 
you are very much heated. The moisture is 
" perspiration." 
The holes or pores in the seed are there 
for the purpose of enabling the seed when it 
has been grown to take in the amount of 
water required to make it swell and grow. In 
the dirty seed, these are stopped up and the 
seed will not grow properly, if at all, for wane 
of water which cannot get in at the closed-up 
pores. It is precisely the same with your own 
pores. If ynu do not keep your skin clean 
and thus open the pores, the moisture within 
you which wishes to pass out as perspiration 
cannot do so, and you will find that you do 
not feel so healthy and strong as you would if 
you regularly bathed and washed. 
The depths at which to sow seeds depends 
entirely upon the kind of seeds you are sowing. 
Some require to be barely covered with a thin 
layer of fine soft soil, others should be planted 
at a depth of from ^ an inch to 3 or 4 inches, 
but this you will learn when you begin to 
study the methods of sowing and planting 
adopted in different parts. 
Questions on Lesson 5. 
1. Why should a farmer be a good judge of 
seeds P 
2. In what way may seeds be destroyed ? 
3. How are you able to tell w hether seeds 
are good or bad ? 
4. By what experiments can you determine 
the weight of seeds ? 
5. Slate the wrong and the right methods of 
saving seeds. 
6. How can wheat seed be improved ? 
7. What are the natural holes in the skin of 
seeds culler" ? 
8. What is the object of these holes ? 
9. What would happen if the holes are 
stopped up with dirt ? 
10. At what depth should seeds be sown ? 
— Queensland Agricultural Journal. 
EXTEENAL PARASITES OF POULTEY. 
The parasitic infestation of poultry causes far 
more loss than most breeders imagine. Birds are 
rarely examined, and the cause of their poor 
condition is not ascertained or even considered. 
The evil is allowed to spread unmolasted, in many 
instances it spreads with great rapidity, and a 
general weak and unhealthy condition results. 
The chief parasites of poultry are insects, mites, 
and worms. 
These parasites are most injurious to young 
chicks and " brood "hens. The persistent loss of 
chicks, and the failure of hens to bring off their 
young, are often due to t^he irritation caused by 
the presence of parasites upon their bodies — 
enemies that are frequently unsuspected. The 
insect and mite pests weaken the constitution and 
predispose to other maladies, such as diptheritic 
roup and " gapes " ; in many cases they have 
been the forerunner of these worse epizootic 
diseases. Parasites on the young birds stunt 
their growth. What is termed "scaly-leg" is 
due to a parasite — a mite. Another species of 
