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‘1 Jan., 1900.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 3 
The rainfall is 17 inches. Jn answer to the question, “Does the manuring 
for wheat spoil the grass afterwards? ” Professor Lowrie said: Quite the con- 
trary. If you miss manuring a turn of the drill in sowing the crop, you can see 
where it was next year by the comparative shortness of the grass. Phosphates 
make the trefoil grow rather heavily, and that, from the point of view of the 
sheep man, is a disadvantage, but they make the other feed grow also. 
DOES GOAT-KEEPING PAY. 
As exchange on this point says:—Goat-keeping -pays excellently under 
circumstances where conditions are not favourable to grazing cows. 
There are several kinds of goats, but the three chief varieties are—Good, bad, 
and yery bad. Pure Angoras are excellent milkers, and Angoras crossed with 
common varieties produce really valuable animals, more especially if care be 
taken in the matter of choosing good milkers for breeding from. 
Goat’s milk has been known‘to give a butter test equal to 5:4, 
Goats want good feed, and to be allowed to forage in clean places where 
access cannot be had to undesirable feed. 
Goat's milk does not possess any characteristic flavour if the animals be 
prevented from eating gum leaves, bark, and other strong tasting fodders. It 
1s the feed they eat that imparts the flavour to milk from goats allowed to 
wander among bushes and undergrowth of various kinds. If properly fed, the 
milk from goats is as sweet as that from cows, and, furthermore, it is richer and. 
more strengthening than any other, being specially adapted for young children 
-and invalids. f 
PROFITS ON GOATS. 
Uncix Sam’s Department of Agriculture (says the Florida A riculturist), in. 
seeking out new fields of husbandry for the American farmer, has completed a 
curious and interesting investigation into the possibilities of an industry highly 
profitable abroad, but ignored in this country—that of goat-raising for skins, 
Hleece, milk, cheese, and by-products. Ina report the department offers this 
slighted industry as a means by which a farmer can increase his prosperity and 
incidentally enrich his soil without cost. The department says that the 
conditions of climate, land, and labour in most of the States of the Union afford 
almost unlimited: natural facilities for the successful prosecution of the industry. 
We use in our manufactures a constantly increasing amount of goat skins, 
but we produce comparatively none ourselves. Last year over 32,000 tons, 
or 65,000,000 Ib., of goat skins were brought in, chiefly at New York; and the 
average price in New York was 40 cents per lb., or a total value of 26,000,000 
dollars. At 4 Ib. to the skin, the average weight of dry skins, it requires the 
slaughter of 16,226,700 goats and kids to yield the skins imported last year. 
This represents live flocks of foreign goats aggregating from 25,000,000 to 
80,000,000 for our present supply of marketable goat skins alone. If all the 
goats in this country were kept solely to supply skins for market, they would 
fail to supply even an insignificant fraction of the present demand. 
In goat-keeping on a large scale it is not alone the skins and fleeces that 
enter into the profit account. If the skins imported last year represented 
native stock, there would have been taken additionally into our home market 
cand profit account nearly the whole animal—the flesh, tallow, bones, hoofs, 
horns, &¢., which together would constitute more than half of the entire 
marketable value. Besides, there is to be derived from the mature females 
