256 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL souRNAL. [1 Aprtn, 1899. 
ignorance and lack of appreciation of the true situation that there is any warfare 
between the scientific and the practical. True practice is based on science ; 
and the more intenscly scientific we are, the more are we practical. 
Again, I have been deeply impressed with the heavy cost of real agricultural 
education. Such instruction can be imparted only in a small measure in 
lectures. Each student must receive individual training and be closely watched 
over by expert instructors. It is easy to “lecture a class to death” ; it is 
difficult and expensive to give them that kind of instruction which they can 
use in their every-day farm operations at home, and which will make better 
practical farmers of them. 
Readers of the Gazette generally, I am sure, will declare their willingness 
to stand by their agricultural colleges. This moral support is all right and 
good as far as it goes. Now, are they willing to give it the financial support 
needed ? A day’s training for the young farmers, properly given, will cost 
much more than a day’s training for the lawyer or the scientific student, for 
the farmer must have before him expensive apparatus and living plants and 
animals with which to work. These are costly in the first instance, and are 
expensive to maintain. The lawyers can bo taught in large classes. The 
farmer student must have individual assistance. Will our farmers who say 
they give their agricultural colleges moral support see to it that they are 
properly equipped in library, laboratory, field, and stable? Our teachers are 
rapidly learning how to teach practical agriculture; will our farmers whose 
sons are to receive this instruction strengthen these teachers with the moral 
and financial support they so much need ? 
PROFIT IN WHEAT FARMING. 
Trav South Australian farmers should so persistently adhere to wheat-growing, 
in the face of the small average yield obtained by them year after year, excites 
the surprise of farmers in other colonies, where the yield ranges from 10 to 40 
bushels per acre, with average crops throughout of from 17 to 30 bushels per 
acre. 
When we come to look into the matter from a pounds, shillings, and pence 
standpoint, the persistence of the South Australian is not so remarkable. The 
whole thing resolves itself into the question of cost of cultivation, cost of 
harvesting, and cost of freight. Now, before we place before our readers the 
statistics of Australian production, let us see what is being done in the United 
States of America. Wein Australia are accustomed to look a great deal to 
that country for hints and wrinkles which may assist us to obtain the maximum 
of profit at a minimum of expenditure. 
Mr. Shelton, late principal of the Queensland Agricultural College, has 
time and again shown how the Kansas farmers, and also the farmers of other 
States, manage to live comfortably on the proceeds of their wheat crops. We 
do not recollect that he has at any time given us the experience of the Dakota 
farmers. We therefore place before our readers the position of the farmer in 
that wheat-growing State. p 
A correspondent of the Agricultural Gazette, London, writes thus :— 
CHEAP FARMING IN DAKOTA AND ITS RETURNS. 
_ It is surprising that farmers in new countries should be satisfied with the 
miserably small crops which they obtain under their system of extensive 
cropping. One who farms in South Dakota, and is considered a sufficiently 
good example of his district to have his methods fully described and illustrated 
in the Rural New Yorker, admitted that his yield of wheat averaged only 
6 bushels an acre. He cultivates 300 acres of land, using the most modern of 
labour-saving implements, and makes his cost of cultivation extremely small. 
The cost of labour from first to last he makes 8s. 13d. per acre; 1 bushel of 
a 
