10 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jan., 1899. 
corporation advertises yearly for men, naming the day on which the cutters and 
mili hands will be engaged. We can do something similar. Combination 
amongst ourselves is required, and, this secured, an office should be opened in 
Sydney, and possibly in Melbourne, where cane-cutters and mill hands can be 
engaged, a large number being brought up in a body, and dropped at the 
different sugar district ports along the coast, their passages home again being 
guaranteed if they work through the season.* ‘This plan was successful in the 
shearers’ strike in 1891, and there is no reason why the same system should 
not find adoption here. It may be argued that there are many reasons against, 
this course of action, but they all stand nullified by the fact that no action on 
our part means ruination to the farmers and the millowners. Ifa better plan is 
forthcoming, we are prepared to hear and welcome it.—Mackay Sugar Journal. 
* If an office as here suggested were opened in Brisbane and another in Rockhampton, say, 
and the same facilities offered to our own people temporarily out of work, perhaps the desired 
amount of labour would be forthcoming. It is the want of means and the uncertainty of getting 
work which prevents scores of men going to the sugar districts who would gladly do so for the 
season.—ED. Q. A. J. ; 
~ Agriculture. 
TOBACCO. 
Mr. Neviir, Tobacco Expert, says that it is not at all necessary, nor is it 
a good thing, to select the richest lands for tobacco-growing. A soil which 
will produce a splendid crop of maize, potatoes, lucerne, or sugar-cane is not 
necessarily a soil which will produce a good tobacco. In the United States, 
tobacco is grown on lands which would not be thought worth cultivating in 
Queensland. The best soil for tobacco in Florida is a grey sandy loam, under- 
laid by a stiff red or yellow clay sub-soil. Such land will require manuring. 
- But what is the proper kind of manure to use? In Florida they say the 
best fertiliser is cotton-seed crushed and cotton-seed meal—the latter giving 
the plants a quick start; the former, by its slower action, feeding the plants at 
a later period and sustaining them during the important crisis of leaf formation. 
About 80 to 100 bushels of crushed seed and 500 lb. to 800 lb. of the meal 
should be applied per acre. On land thus fertilised, the Sumatra tobacco yields 
on an average 800 lb. per acre, but as much as 1,300 lb. have been harvested 
on small, well-tilled holdings. Cuban tobacco will yield from 500 lb. to 900 lb. 
on an average ; the latter yield is, however, exceptional. 
At the Queensland Agricultural College, Mr. Nevill is experimenting on 
two different soils—one a heavy, deep, rich black loam ; the other a poor, sandy, 
shallow soil, overlying a rocky bottom. Unfortunately, the weather since and 
during the planting-out time was exceptionally dry, and a large proportion of 
the plants failed, but a good many are growing, and the gardeners are busy 
planting up the misses. 
The analysis of a perfect tobacco fertiliser should be 10 to 12 per cent. 
potash, 8 per cent. phosphoric acid, and 4 per cent. nitrogen. A Jamaica paper 
says that it is quite impossible to get this analysis outside a mineral fertiliser, 
We are not aware whether Mr. Nevill has used any fertiliser on the poor soil ; 
but if not, probably next year, when the soil has been analysed, and when it is 
seen what the yield on the unfertilised land is like, he will turn his attention 
to experiments in this direction, although we know that he does not favour the 
use of fertilisers in tobacco-growing. 
If fertilising can be done cheaply, then there are thousands of acres, close 
to our largest cities, and on the railway lines and rivers, which may yet be 
turned to account as tobacco plantations. 
