404. QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Dec., 1898. 
The orchard looks weil, despite the severe treatment the trees received in 
the course of clearing them of insect pests. There are 1,500 trees of different 
varieties, some of which will shortly be in bearing. Nut-grass is very much in 
evidence on the farm, but it appears not to be such a nuisance as below the 
Range, and certainly not to be ineradicable, as many acres which were covered 
with it when uncultivated are now perfectly clean. 
The next district of interest which well repays the visitor for his journey 
is Freestone Creek. We have, in a former number of this Journal, so 
thoroughly described the district, the farms and the indomitable persevering 
farmers, that we should but be repeating ourselves if we were to describe 
them too minutely. 
Suflice it to say that Freestone Creek keeps up its character for heavy 
production, clean fields, and energetic work. Harvesting here is in full swing, 
and already stack-building has begun. : 
A quantity of new land has been taken up and put under rough cultiva- 
tion at Mount Tabor. ‘The yield here will, however, not reach much above 
2 or 3 bags, as the seed was sown on freshly broken land, on which little 
labour had been expended. Some farmers had taken off a crop of corn, and 
then sown wheat broadcast on the same land. In such cases big returns are 
not to be expected. 
We took some pains to ascertain where some of the best crops were likely 
to be reaped. As might be expected from their reputation as wheat farmers 
of years’ standing and experience, the names of Messrs. Arthur and Reuben, 
and George and Addison Free, Tulloch, and Weedman are well to the front. 
Mr. 'T. McGahan has a good plot of 100 acres of wheat and barley. 
Mr. B. Hughes has some excellent Indian pearl wheat. 
Amongst the men of Freestone, Messrs. Robert Craig and James Wilson 
have good areas of clean wheat, the latter some really grand wheat as one 
could wish to see. Messrs. James and John Shelley, farmers of the good old 
Staffordshire tpye, with T. Armstrong and And. Watt, of Jack Smith’s Gully, 
are also among those whose crops will respond heavily to the evident care 
bestowed on them. 
We cannot naturally be expected to enumerate all those who constitute 
the backbone of the wheat industry of the Downs. They have increased so 
much lately, and are still so rapidly increasing, that it will soon require a 
gazetteer to name the men who will form a continuous link before long, from 
Toowoomba to Killarney, of wheatgrowers, who will also join hands across 
from Swan Creek to Freestone Creek, and from Mount Tabor to Mount Sturt. 
Making a late call at the hospitable home of Mr. Jas. Macintosh, at Blink 
Bonny, we bade a regretful farewell to a district, or rather series of districts, 
which, more than any other in Queensland, brings vividly before the visitor 
visions of the old homes of Devonshire, Somerset, and other lovely farming 
counties of the old country. 
The “Sunshine Harvester” has been introduced on the Downs, and is 
now at work on Dr, Tilley’s farm, where the hybridisation of wheat has engaged 
attention, Indian Pearl (a club wheat) having been successfully crossed with 
Velvet Chaff. 
The question of the use of the stripper is a vexed one as much as it was 
in South Australia, and we shall possibly have partisans of Stripper v. Binder 
bringing forward their views pro and con. 
In favour of the stripper, we have the fact that it strips, threshes, win- 
nows, cleans, grades the wheat, and, by only taking the heads of the wheat, no 
chance is given to the Hexham Scent to come into the contract. 
Against this we have the loss of straw, and what is still more to the point, 
according to some who should be good authorities, a damage to the grain, inas- 
much as the grain must not be too ripe when the stripper is set to work. Now 
as the grain continues, after being cut and stooked in the ordinary way, to draw 
every particle of nourishment from the straw, it is certain not to pinch if cut 
at the proper moment. The grain reaped by the stripper, on the other hand, 
