2 
arms, and walking along tlio rows, dropping 
one or two plants in each hole, others following 
to cover them with a little earth. In that 
manner about 20 children will plant an acre at 
a cost of 10s. 
In Queensland, at first, I used bullocks for 
ploughing, but found it far from satisfactory. 
The bullocks certainly did work that horses 
could not do, but it was very slow and very 
bad, the tramping of the bullocks doing almost 
as much harm as the ploughing did good. But 
when I got the steam-plough at work, I found that 
five men and two boys, viz., one engine-driver, 
one windlass-man to coil the wire rope, two 
anchor-men, one ploughman and two boys to 
shift the rope porters, could plough four acres, 
14 inches de?p, per day of ten hours. The 
same men could harrow to a fine tilth 10 
acres a day ; the harrows often running 7 or 8 
miles an hour. In that well tilled soil, on which 
not even a man’s foot had necessarily pressed, a 
ploughman with a pair of horses drew parallel 
furrows fire feet apart, niue inches deep, of 
which work he could do five acres a day. As 
soon as possible after the plough, came three 
men who planted the canes j two of them carried 
a hand-barrow, on which was piled as many 
cane plants as were required for one row 
from top to bottom of the field. The third 
man walked a little in front and took a supply 
of cane plants from the hand-barrow as he 
required them and laid them carefully in the 
furrow, four feet apart. The men who carried 
the hand-barrow pushed a little earth on the 
top of each cane plant with their feet. In this 
manner three men could plant, well and care- 
fully, two acres a day. 
In Jamaica, when the young canes were 
about a foot high, they received the first weed- 
ing and moulding, costing about 10s. per acre j 
in four or five months afterwards a thorough 
weeding was required, as by that time the grass 
had recovered from the tramping it had re- 
ceived during fly-penning, and was growing 
luxuriantly ; that weeding cost £1 per acre, 
often more. A third weeding was sometimes 
necessary. When the canes were about 10 
months old, the dead leaves were removed, 
which operation was called trashing ; at the 
same time all climbing plants, which are 
numerous, are removed ; that first trashing 
costs £1 per acre. The cane is generally trashed 
a second and a third time before it is fit to 
cut, costing 10s. per acre each time. 
In the soil of Cleveland, maize would nob 
grow j although I planted it frequently, I got 
little more than the seed back again ; but in 
most soil in which the cane will be planted in 
Queensland, maize will do well. 
When the canes in Queensland were a few 
inches high, so as to show distinctly where the 
cane plants were, maize was planted in the 
four-feet space, not in the five-feet space, as 
that would have interfered with the work of 
the horses. In about a month afterwards a 
light grubber or scarifier, three feet six inches 
wide, with teeth running three inches deep in 
the ground, was pulled by one horse along the 
five-feet space, thus killing all grass in that 
space, and in its passage pushing down a part 
of the crest of the furrow, which gave the 
canes and maize the moulding they required. 
Three acres a day was an easy task for that 
work. 
When the maize was old enough to require 
hoeing up it was done. That operation cleaned 
the canes of ary grass the grubber had missed ; 
when there was much grass, that cost £1 per 
acre. The grubbing was generally done twice 
more before the canes had grown sufficiently 
to check the growth of grass by their shade. 
I found it best not to trash the canes until 
the following spring, as the dead leaves being 
left on protected the canes from the Queens- 
land winter. Owing to the absence of all 
climbing plants, the cost of trashing was £1 for 
Bourbon canes, and £1 10s. for ribbon canes, 
per acre. In this drier climate only one more 
trashing was required about a month before the 
canes were cut ; the coat was the same as the 
first trashing. 
The cutting of the canes in Jamaica was 
always done by contract, not at a certain fixed 
price per acre, but each man engaged received 
one penny for every dray load of canes re- 
moved from the field; the bullock- driver 
received four pence per load, and his assistant 
two pence. In the following details concerning 
the number of men employed, I will refer to a 
sugar estate in Jamaica doing the same amount 
of work as the estate to which' I refer in 
Queensland is able to do. That I can do 
without difficulty, as I knew four estates in 
Jamaica with machinery which was cast from 
the same patterns as the machinery I erected 
at Cleveland was. It is necessary to be careful 
in this respect, since the larger the machinery, 
the fewer men does it require in proportion to 
the work done. 
In Jamaica, four men cut the canes at the 
root ; six men lifted the canes from the ground, 
cut off the tops, and cut the cane3 to a uniform 
length of three or four feet ; four men 
gathered the canes together, tied them in 
bundles with cane leaves, and stacked them in 
heaps. So many canes formed a bundle, so 
many bundles a heap, and so many heaps a 
dray load. It was the book-keeper’s duty to 
occasionally count the canes in the bundles, and 
the bundles in the heaps, as a check on the 
work. The bullock-drays went over the whole 
field for the canes — the wheels and the bullocks’ 
feet doing much damage to the cane roots, 
from which the next year’s crop sprung. 
About 30 loads to an acre was a fair average. 
In Queensland, while the canes were stand- 
ing, two men with knives, 8£fmething like large 
carving knives, walked one on each side of the 
row of canes, and cut off the tops at the proper 
place, with a slanting cut, which enabled the 
