330 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 May, 1899. 
At 
Pact ess 
Natural size. 
For the profitable feeding of poultry, buckwheat is hardly surpassed by 
any other seed grown on the farm. It seems to be, like oats, possessed of 
certain exciting properties which cause the hens to lay much earlier in the 
spring. For the same reason it is superior to corn for horses. According 
to comparative experiments carefully carried out, 1 bushel of buckwheat is 
equivalent to 2 of oats, and for feeding pigs, 8 bushels of buckwheat flour are 
equal to 12 of barley flour. The whole plant can also be mown down and fed 
as green fodder to both cattle and horses. But when dry itis reduced to a 
very small compass, and it does not pay to make hay of it. Buckwheat grows 
very rapidly, being usually ready for LaRveRtiaie in about ten weeks from the 
time of sowing. This circumstance makes of it a capital catch-crop to sow 
broadcast or in drills to choke down weeds, and then to plough under before 
_ sowing the main crop. ® 
As to soil, buckwheat is the least exacting of our cultivated plants. T+ 
will adapt itself almost to any land, but prefers granitic soil, which seems to 
impart a special flavour to the seeds. Nor does it seem to be very particular 
about climate. In Europe, it succeeds in Spain and Italy as well ag 
in Russia, Denmark, and Sweden. Here, in Queensland, 1 have grown 
it for years in the dry West, also on the Darling Downs, and quite 
recently here at Riggenden. ‘The last crop was sown on the 26th December, 
1898, on newly broken forest land, and harvested on 8th March, 1899. [ 
expected very little from it, thinking that a plant mostly grown in temperate 
and cold countries would not be able to bear our summer heat. Well, it stood ~ 
it wonderfully well, although when quite young—on the 17th and 18th of 
January—the thermometer stood at 105 and LO7 degrees Fahr., in the shade. Such 
exceptional and trying heat did not seem to affect it in the least, although 
