professor Branford’s address. 581 
may expect to see the land yielding its increase, and the bank of nature 
again honouring the cheques of her avaricious customers ; meanwhile, 
let us endeavour to find and adopt measures for hastening that happy 
time. At the present juncture it is needless to suggest application of 
manure, artificial or natural. The labour question negatives that. 
Fencing will tend greatly to the restoration of the veld; on that account 
ostrich farming will prove highly beneficial exclusive of the present 
wealth in their feathers; the feeding of ostriches, also, with so large an 
amount of artificial food, will have undoubted influences in manuring 
the ground—with manure equal almost to Peruvian Guano—but spread 
over the land in homoeopathic doses. 
Grass-hirning will also lose its votaries, for few, I think, will be so 
foolhardy as to apply the firebrand to an ostrich-camp. 
As to twice-shearing, it is quite evident such a system tends to 
reduce the vital powers of the animal, especially when such is a 
breeding animal and has to withstand the effect of the inclement 
weather, during the period of utero-gestation, as well as at a time 
when It is suckling its offspring. For hamels or slaughtering sheep I 
do not so much object, but even in those it is most vitiatory. I would 
most decidedly advise legislation to prevent removing the covering 
which Nature has provided when food is scarce and weather cold. In 
England any one shearing an animal under such circumstances would be 
prosecuted and heavily fined for cruelty to animals, unless a provision 
for artificial covering were made by the owner of such animals shorn. 
Many cases have been brought before the judicial bench and punishment 
inflicted, and it is now not an uncommon occurrence to see sheep sent to 
market for slaughtering with rugs on after being shorn, and woe betide 
the man who sends sheep without. So great is the antipathy to such 
cruelty, and so decided are the authorities to put a stop to it that 
opinions of the most eminent physiologists and medical men have been 
taken upon the subject, and I assure you, gentlemen, that shearing an 
animal and submitting the same to inclement weather and great alterna¬ 
tion of temperature has such an effect upon the flesh, that the meat of 
such animals has even been condemned, and its sale stopped for human 
food. If, then, shearing at the approach, and in the midst of winter has 
such a prejudicial effect, and the facts are undeniable, how necessary 
it is that this Association should do all in its power to put a stop to so 
barbarous, inhuman, and unnecessary a process, and one tending to 
deteriorate the quality and vital powers of the sheep. I may even go 
further, and say that we should petition the new Parliament to pass a 
short Act in connection with a general Scab Act to do away with such a 
standing disgrace. A Fencing Measure should also be advocated. With 
a view to the restoration of the veld, I would suggest that on those 
farms where evidence shows, or suspicion even, rests, of the same having 
been overstocked, grass seeds—either European or selected and collected 
from those districts of the Colony where the most nutritious and best 
feeding grasses are still flourishing—should be sown broad-cast in 
various parts of the veld ; that where such be sown no grazing by sheep 
should be allowed for at least a twelvemonth, and by that means oppor¬ 
tunity would be afforded for restoration of the veld. I may state by the 
way, that some time since I brought down from the neighbourhood of 
Herschel some valuable grasses, and on asking farmers in the Beaufort 
district whether they had such in their veld, they replied no, but they 
recollected them in their veld many years ago; which clearly proves my 
point that the best pasture has been eaten out, and has given place to 
coarser and less useful grasses. This plan of seed-sowing may on first 
