1 Smer., 1897.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. aid 
15 beans, which means a return of from 25 to 35 bushels to the acre. 
As soon as gathered they should not be heaped, but stored carefully in 
an airy place to dry. In the bash a good plan is to put them in thinly 
woven bags, and hang them under the veranda-roof. They can then be 
thrashed with a flail. Be careful though not to hit too hard or to thrash when 
the beans are too dry, otherwise many beans will be crushed. Then pass 
through the winnower. Should none be available, select a windy day; pour 
the beans from a dish held level with the shoulder into a tub lying on the 
ground—twice or even three times in succession—by which means the wind 
will blow away all the particles of parchment-like pods, leaving the beans 
perfectly clean. Then bag and keep in a dry place. ‘ 
Have them for sale, as they are now in great demand at 3d. per lb., which 
means a return of from £15 to £25 per acre. Have them in store the whole 
year round for your own and your family’s use. They form at all seasons a 
most acceptable food, being the most concentrated and most nutritious of all 
yegetables. If still a few are left, boil them and feed them to pigs, which will 
turn them into an excellent bacon. 
Tf we sum up, we now find that the crop of cow-pea has provided you at 
your choice :— : 
1. With green pasture for farm animals. 
2. With ensilage. 
8. With hay. 
4, With a good supply of beans, which means a handsome cheque per 
acre, and a good saving on the butcher’s, baker’s, and grocer’s bills. 
. It has kept your land perfectly free from weeds. , 
. It has enriched it with an abundant supply of the precious nitrogen ; 
so abundant in fact that the visitors to the farm, seeing the 
extraordinary difference in favour of the plants—wheat and maize— 
- grown on the cow-pea plots, would ask whether there had not been 
a sheepyard there before. 
7. It has not appreciably impoverished the soil of its mineral matter, as 
the cow-pea has powerful roots—sometimes 1 inch in diameter, 
which sink deep and wide in search of food, loosening the soil in 
every direction and bringing its mineral constituents within the 
reach of the roots of the following crops. 
8. It leaves the land in a perfectly pulverised state. 
9. It does not occupy the land long. When sown in the spring, the 
crop is gathered in December and January, and can be followed by 
corn, sorghum, millets, pumpkins, potatoes, &c. If sown in 
November, immediately after harvest, it has yet time to mature 
before the next sowing season comes in. 
SON 
ConcLuUsIon. 
Mr. Briinnich, the Government Agricultural Chemist, who has had con- 
siderable experience with the cow-pea, estimates its manurial value at £5 per 
acre. That means that every year in three months’ time, and for 2s. worth of 
seed, the Queensland farmer can increase by £5 per acre the value of his culti- 
vated land. Let everyone now pause and reckon by how much he can make 
himself richer, according to his acreage. 
For the 300,000 acres we have now under plough in the colony, the above 
figures represent £1,500,000- tuken annually directly from the inexhaustible 
reservoir of the atmosphere and transmitted to the soil by the medium of the 
cow-pea, and those marvellous helpers conquered:and, so to say, domesticated 
by science for the use of the intelligent and progressive farmer ! 
teat 
