168 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ava., 1899. 
wheat the farmer grows. Some farmers, however, are careless with their wheat 
and put it up into any form of stack. It gets wet, they thresh it,and perhaps 
spread it out to dry. A sample is brought to a miller, but he will not have it 
Thefarmer grumbles, buthe finds a purchaser forit somewhere else, for the farmers 
in my district do not give much away. As for the hard wheats, the old mills 
were not able to grind them. I have grown the Belatourka, which is a hard flinty 
wheat which the old stone mills were not able to grind, but with the present 
machinery such wheats present no difficulty in grinding. Most of the spring 
wheats are soft, but I think the Downs farmers have to thank the Department 
of Agriculture for the number of new varieties they have introduced. As for 
the Purple Straw, we grew it on the Downs until we almost grew it out of the 
place. It is a splendid wheat, but you cannot be sure of it. I remember ba 
‘a paddock of it, only about half a chain of which reached maturity. This h 
chain was alongside the sliprails by which the horses entered the paddock, and 
the latter had trodden the ground about it down about as hard as it could be. 
T have seen oats as rusty as wheat, and barley (malting) the same. I have seen 
the red rust so thick that you could write your name init. I have had Steinwedel 
wheat come on beautifully and reach that stage when you could almost squeeze 
it; in about 10 days’ time it was all spoiled, and instead of a dozen bags per 
acre, I got 5 bushels of grain like carraway seed. ‘There is no such thing as 
a rust-proof wheat, but I believe in a man obtaining his seed, whether wheat or 
any other grain, from another part of the country, say from flat land to hilly. 
By using the same seed on the same ground year after year the wheat is bound 
to deteriorate. There was the Allora wheat, one of the finest we ever had, but 
now as rusty as any. The Budd’s Early is now, I think, one of the coming 
wheats for the Downs. 
Mr. W. Deacon (Allora): To show how facts can vary on this wheat 
question, I have only to instance the case of Purple Straw. What Mr. Kennedy 
says about Purple Straw is true, and so is what Mr. Mahon says of the same 
wheat. In the south, however, there is a White Purple Straw, and it does very 
well there, I understand. Then with regard to practically all of the wheats at 
Gatton being rusty: Professor Shelton and myself were experimenting with 
wheats, and had the same varieties at both Warwick and Roma. Some of the 
wheats that were rusty at Roma were clean at Warwick, and vice versd. I 
believe in early sowing, never mind what kind of wheat it is. If you. put im 
spring wheat early, it will not grow up, but will keep forming roots. There 
may be different times for harvesting, but there is only one sowing time, and 
that is in the fall. I believe in the middle of April for sowing all through the 
Downs, and for the Central district of Queensland, probably earlier still. The 
seeding time is the same all over the world. As for Belatourka, I recently went 
to a miller for some of it for seed, but he told me he could not spare any, as he 
wanted all he had to mix with the softer wheats. The millers take Belatourka 
and other hard wheats readily now. As for Dr. Eriksson’s theory, I hope Mr. 
Briinnich will try some experiments in the same direction. Eriksson certainly 
did try the wheats in sterilised soil closed in with glass, so that there could be no 
infection, and yet his wheats got the rust. With regard to infection, there is 
rust on certain plants and grasses all over Australia, and I believe the same 
applies to Sweden. 
The Hon. J. V. Cuavaway: I think we must thank Mr. Deacon for his 
paper. I do not wish to discuss it, but there are two things worth mentioning 
in connection with it, and one is that we should all realise Mr. Lamb’s state-_ 
ment that the wheat industry will nevér really be on a satisfactory basis until 
we export. This is true of every industry—that it will never be on a sound 
footing until it is able to put its produce on the world’s market and at the 
world’s prices. Another question crops up: Mr. Mahon was very definite that 
a certain sort of wheat was a good kind to grow, but it seems to me that it will 
require a large amount of experience to say that definitely, in one part or 
another, a certain wheat is the best kind to grow. I do not for a moment 
_pretend to correct Mr. Mahon , but J remember in New South Wales a certain 
