Farming and Irrigation, 91 
the Mahaicony district, with fine, fat, sleek cattle luxu- 
riating in the fattening herbage, all giving tokens of cat- 
tle-farming being an apparently profitable undertaking. 
Let the same journey be taken after three months of 
drought, and what a transformation has taken place ! The 
velvet-like grass is replaced by stunted dried-up herbage, 
on which the meagre emaciated cattle can scarcely keep 
hide and bones together; at every turn cattle are seen in 
all stages of exhaustion, scrambling through partially 
dried-up trenches in search of the dregs of muddy water, 
while in many of these sticky sloughs the old and weak 
cows are making their final struggle. Carrion crows are 
seen luxuriating on the dead carcases, and the well picked 
bones of not a few dot the plain, giving a livelihood to 
bone collectors, who gather the dried-up bones for the 
manure manufacturer. On some of the large cattle farms 
artesian wells have been sunk, which afford drinking- 
water to the flocks ; but the supply is too limited to serve 
for irrigation. I have no hesitation in attributing the 
want of general success in cattle-raising in this Colony, 
to the great mortality which takes place every dry season. 
It is then that old cows which have gone on breeding for 
15 or 20 years succumb to the want of food and water, — 
animals which ought to have been fed off at a much earlier 
age, as is done in other countries, for the butcher. 
The dark green couch grass, which is the pasture grass 
of British Guiana, thrives wherever the land can be 
covered with water for a time, and of all the means of im- 
proving its growth I know nothing to equal a crop of 
rice. Land that may be covered with coarse herbage, 
sour grass, sage, and such like, on being slightly stirred 
M 1 
