1 Mar., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 165 
At least one instance may be cited in which electricity has been used 
commercially. Near Boston a large grower has put the electric light to work 
in forcing lettuce so that a gain of at least two weeks on three crops is secured. 
Two lamps are huug above the house, and their effect is apparent for at least 
100 teet. 
ON MANURING. 
An who derive either pleasure or profit from the tillage of the soil acknow- 
ledge the great importance of drainage and manuring. In this colony, how- 
eyer, little is done in either of these matters. The fact is that when land 
began to be taken up in the neighbourhood of our coast towns and on the 
banks of coastal rivers, the land selected was invariably rich scrub land, low- 
lying, subject to periodical inundations, and as a natural consequence of great 
depth and marvellous fertility. “Some of the farms purchased in the early 
sixties are still producing good payable crops, and not an ounce of manure has 
been spread on them, if we except the ashes resulting from burnt cornstalks 
and weeds and the shed leaves of the lucerne plant. On such lands drainage 
was quite unnecessary, as no water wouid rest on a loose vegetable topsoil 
from 10 to 20 feet in depth. 
The same reason for non-drainage and non-manuring applied to the deep 
black and red voleaniec soils inland. But after the lapse of so many years, 
many of these latter soils, at least, have become poorer, and, as the more 
important constituents are exhausted, the soil has become less friable and 
more impacted. Hence the superfluous rainwater, instead of percolating through 
and passing away at a great depth into the watercourses, remains on the 
surface. The land gradually becomes sour, the crops look stunted and yellow, 
and the farmer comes to the conclusion that it is time that manure were 
applied in some form or other. Unfortunately, on impervious soils, or on 
extremely sandy soils, manuring without draining means useless expenditure, 
and many men, who have for years made a good living out of the land, in the 
days when it possessed all its good qualities, and when prices for produce were 
high, became alarmed at the great expense entailed by draining and left the 
land to take up virgin soil somewhere else. 
Now, this is only history repeating itself. In all new countries when 
agricultural land is plentiful and cheap, men find it expedient to work out the 
soil, and then move further afield, cr, if they have a large area of arable land, 
they abandon their first cultivation, use the land as cattle and horse paddocks, 
and break up virgin soil for cultivation. This obviously, under the conditions 
we have named, is, for many years, the best and cheapest course which can be 
adopted. It was so in America, in Canada, in South America, in Java, in 
South Africa, and doubtless our skin-clad forefathers in Europe did the same. 
In fact, Virgil, Cresar, and other Latin authors have shown that it was so. 
But to-day conditions are changed. Land is more valuable in the neigh- 
bourhood of cities, or near railway lines, and on navigable rivers. A farmer 
does not care to leave his old home on which he has expended hundreds, perhaps 
thousands, of pounds in the course of years, to go away to some far off inland 
country, however good the soil may be. It remains then for him to renovate 
the old soil and bring it back again to its original state of fertility. 
This end is to be achieved by draining and manuring. But having been 
so long accustomed to do without these essential operations—essential to him 
now—he is possibly ata loss how to proceed, and this is where he profits by 
the work of experiment farms. Here it may be remarked that in all countries 
where experiment farms are established (and only the most backward countries 
are without them), it is never expected that they will pay directly. No direct 
profit is made out of them except under peculiar circumstances. But see how 
they pay indirectly. Lands have become poor, they are liable to be thrown 
out of cultivation, and to be left as storehouses for noxious weeds which 
