338 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Nov., 1898. 
Ina bushel of ordinary wheat there are some 700,000 kernels, or in a crop 
of 40 bushels 28,000,000, which, upon the number of ears produced per acre 
(see table), gives about 22 grains as the average contents of the present ear, 
By cross-breeding certain varieties of wheats quite a marvellous result is 
obtained, for not only are the kernels larger, but the wheat ears are extended 
in size, and the number of grains is multiplied. It is to be hoped that farmers 
and seed-growers will after this turn their attention to cross-breeding wheats 
with a view of producing a grain containing strong gluten. And in this 
connection it should be remembered that the nutritive value, as far as this is 
dependent on its fitness when ground into flour to lay on muscle in the human 
body, is principally determined by the amount of gluten or albuminous matters 
it contains. 
TUBERCULOUS CONSUMPTION AND FARMING. 
By HENRY A. TARDENT, 
Manager of the Biggenden Experiment Farm. 
Ir is usually considered that few professions, if any, are more healthy than 
farming, and, to a certain extent, it is so. It would be still more so were the 
laws of hygiene better known and more rigidly observed on the farm, which, 
unfortunately, is seldom the case. Not long ago my worthy friend, Mr. Fred. 
Wills, of the Department of Agriculture, attracted in this Journal the attention 
of farmers to the serious dangers they are exposed to from hydatids. To most 
readers—including myself—that excellent article was a revelation, and I have 
no doubt many a father has in consequence of it given a word of warning to 
his children. 
I wouid like in the following lines to make everyone in Queensland 
acquainted with the serious dangers attached to the neglect—on the farm and 
in the home in general—of precautionary measures against a most insidious 
disease which is at the present time making considerable headway amongst 
us: I mean consumption. 
The question has been repeatedly reiterated and discussed in the 
newspapers of the colony, but in a somewhat desultory manner. Doctors 
themselves seem to be far from agreeing in their opinions, some believing that 
# sanatorium for consumptives can be established with impunity in the midst 
of a populous city, whilst others consider that five miles should be the shortest 
distance allowed between a sanatorium and a populous centre. The writer of 
these lines was born within a few miles of one of the largest existing sanatoria 
(Leysin, in Switzerland), and thus happens to have had opportunities to 
become acquainted with the question. In addition he has received from a 
friend in Switzerland a most interesting pamphlet on tuberculosis, written by 
Dr. Sonderegger, who is probably the best living authority on the matter, 
That pamphlet can well be considered as summing up for the reading public 
the present state of our knowledge of that disease and its cure, in a country 
which has so far done most to prevent and cure it. 
It is now intended to translate the pamphlet in a condensed form, leaving 
~ aside, of course, some dry statistics and everything of too local a character to 
be of use to us. 
Luberculosis is infectious, avoidable, and curable. Such is the epigraph of 
the pamphlet. 
When the bacilli of tuberculosis, which were first discovered by the 
celebrated Dr. Koch, of Berlin, are inoculated to the healthiest of animals, they 
invariably produce in them tuberculous consumption. The same happens 
when animals are made to inhale dust formed from the sputum of consumptive 
patients. The same has happened also with very strong men who had not been 
cautious enough in their relations with consumptives. Not seldom many cases 
follow each other in families which had previously been quite free from it, 
We know of houses and prisons, all the inhabitants of which have become 
consumptives. ‘There are also stables and cow-sheds where tuberculosis is so 
