164 The Question of Calf -rearing. 
the price of butter can be maintained, dairying is likely to be very 
successful. 
It was my good fortune last summer to visit the fertile stretch 
of country that I have attempted to describe, and, judging from the 
necessarily superficial view I could get in a short time, I should say 
that it will become even a more important factor in the agricultural 
future of the Colony of Victoria than it is at present. When fully 
developed, and covered with prosperous farms, it will compare 
favourably with the best parts of the old country. 
James A. Caird. 
THE QUESTION OF CALF-REARING. 
The rearing of live stock, especially stock of the food-yielding 
classes, lias been, and no doubt will continue to be, more or less 
subject to fluctuations. These irregularities have not, however, 
been unvarying as to interval or uniform in degree. Some of them 
have been comparatively slow in operation and moderate in extent, 
whilst others have been somewhat rapid in the one and extreme in 
the other. They were the results of disturbing tendencies, which 
are, no doubt, in some degree, susceptible of being regulated and 
controlled ; and which may possibly be less various in character in 
the future than they have been in the past, though, at the same 
time, as nothing is so certain to occur as that which is not expected, 
it is almost idle to try what peering into the future will disclose in 
reference to this. A partial failure of crops, a dread of infectious 
diseases, a new development in foreign supplies of meat, a shrinkage 
in the value of cattle, a semi-tropical summer, or a partially-arctic 
winter, have all of them been, turn and turn about, causes of fluc- 
tuations in calf-rearing in the British Isles. Taking into our ken 
the latest of these disturbing tendencies, we find that the searching 
winter of 1891-2, which was rough on forage, greatly diminishing 
our normal surplus store of it, and followed as it was by a summer 
whose hay-crop was small in quantity and inferior in quality, must 
be held responsible— primarily if not chiefly responsible — for the 
heavy drop in the price of cattle which occurred in the fall of 
1892. The unusually small supply of food for cattle with which 
farmers almost everywhere commenced the recent winter may be 
taken to explain the greater part of the drop in price, as well as the 
falling-off in rearing which will almost certainly be the sequel. 
In order to obtain a good hold of the salient bearings of the 
subject, it will be expedient to consult the Agricultural Returns of 
Great Britain — which so well merit, and even demand, perennial 
study on the part of every stock-breeding farmer in the kingdom, 
for if chronic fluctuations in the rearing of calves are ever to be 
kept within bounds, I know of nothing so well calculated to accom- 
plish that desirable state of things as the lessons which these Returns 
annually disclose. To serve our present purpose, it will, perhaps, be 
