146 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Fes., 1899. 
feet all round the stack are waste—that is a small matter when compared with 
the immense bulk of fodder of the most nutritious and most milk-producing 
character which the farmer has secured. 
Notwithstanding all that is written on high-class farming and the 
anxiety of farmers to cultivate their land in the best possible manner at the 
least possible expense, there is an unconquerable spirit of conservatism in the 
true hereditary farmer which, in the generality of cases, will not allow him to 
work on principles of which he confesses that he sees the advantage. What 
was good for his forbears is good for him, he says, quite forgetting that others are 
profiting by labour-saving implements, cheap but effective manures, improve 
classes of cattle, swine, and poultry, and hence are enabled to put their produce 
on the market at far less expense than the man who looks on at what he calls 
these ‘ fads,’ and works on in the old groove. 
To become successful in farming at the present day, the farmer must 
march with the times, or he must go to the wall, and he in most cases has him- 
self to blame. Science points out to him the means of defying the effects of 
drought—it has shown him how to revolutionise the work of the dairy; 
how to send delicate produce on long sea voyages without detriment: it has 
given him new products, new fertilisers, new labour-saving utensils—stiil, look 
round our farming districts, and what do we see? Except in the wheat- 
growing districts, we see the same style of farming as obtained in the colony 
thirty years ago. Not even the flail has gone completely out of use. Take 
drainage again. Every farmer knows the value of drainage. How many 
put it in practice? Only lately afarm could be seen not a hundred 
miles from Brisbane, which had, amongst the rest, received the benefit of the 
late rains. Over half the area, which is nearly all under maize crop, was 
covered with an inch or two of water. On one part, however, the land is 
slightly raised. Here the maize is quite a foot andoften two feet higher than 
that on the low ground. Yet that tarmer says he cannot afford to drain. But 
he can afford to plough and cross-plough, harrow, and roll, put in a crop, and, 
without harvesting a grain of corn or a single potato, plough all out again, 
resow, and repeat the performance ad 1ib., living meanwhile on the produce of 
a few unhappy cows, which pick up their living in the best way they can. 
The same style prevails in the paddocking of the farm stock. Instead of 
paddocks being subdivided and fed down in rotation, a fence is put round the 
whole paddock—all the beasts are turned into it. The grass is being fed down 
night and day. Itis never afforded a chance to grow, and the resultis, naturally, 
a bare. 60-acre or 100-acre paddock in which the stock are fain to paw out the 
roots of the grass to obtain any sort of sustenance in dry weather. If such 
paddocks were subdivided, and the stock changed from one to the other, there 
would be feed all the year round, and stock would be kept in good condition. 
KEEPING ONIONS. 
THE principal difficulty in storing onions is their liability to sprout. This 
must, if possible, be avoided, because, whenever growth is set up in any bulb or 
seed, that bulb or seed deteriorates in proportion to the extent of growth. 
Anyone who has tried to eat an old seed potato, which has been inadvertently 
gathered up with the new crop, will be aware of this fact. Onions, when 
pulled, should not be stored away at once, but should be left fora few hours on 
the ground todry. Then they should be put away dry, and in the coolest shed 
or barn which is available. They require constant looking over to sort out any 
bad ones, for, as in the case of fruit—such as oranges, apples, pears, &c—® 
single rotting onion will infect all those in its immediate neighbourhood. It 
used to be the custom in the good old-fashionod farmhouses in the old country 
to hang the onions in strings to the great kitchen rafters in company with 
hams, flitches of bacon, &c. This hanging in strings is a good plan where it is 
only a question of keeping a few, but in the case of many tons the labour 
would not be recompensed by the profit. , 
