2 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 Jan., 1900. | 
TECHNICAL TERMS USED IN THE TRADE TO DESCRIBE THE DIFFERENT 
GRADES OF WOOL WITH THEIR QUALITIES AND DEFECTS. 
Combing.—A wool of such a length as will, after carding, bear the strain of 
going through the process of combing. \ 
Olothing.—A. wool not necessarily deficient in the qualities of a combing » 
wool, but one of fine texture and possessing milling or felting qualities from its | 
close serrations. i 
Staple.—Part of a fleece often terminating in a point more or less” 
pronounced—partaking of the nature of a curl. : 
Shafty—A square, deep, and even staple. Character shows true, free” 
evenness of staple, with thorough soundness. i 
Moity.—-A. term applied to seedy wools ; but | 
Seedy is now more generally used. It denotes a fleece or part of a fleece © 
containing more or less vegetable matters, such as real grass seeds or tips 0 i 
grasses. | 
- Burry.—Denotes that the wool contains either trefoil, Bathurst or 
Noogoora burrs. 
Mushy.—A poor, tender, and open staple, of lean fibres and inferior quality. 
“ 
Tender.—A. wool showing a decided break in one part of the staple, caused 
by want of feed during a period of its growth or through disease. | 
Skirty.—W ool which has either not been skirted or improperly skirted. 
Earthy and (or) Sandy.—A fleece containing a decided amount of soil,” 
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‘dust, or sand, or both. 7. 
Wasty.—A wool containing earth, sand, or yolk, seeds, burrs, or all of 
them. 
Yolky.—A wool containing a large percentage of natural fatty secretion 
of the sheep. 
Dusty.—Slightly earthy. i 
Dingy.—Of dull colour, but without discolouration. | 
Stained.—Parts discoloured by urine. j 
Canary Stain.—Slight discolouration of parts of the fleeces, caused pro-— 
bably through heat, after heavy rains; by no means prejudicial to the staple, 
except that the wool can only be used for dark dyes. . 
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DO PHOSPHATES EXHAUST THE SOIL? i 
Proressor Lowrie, in answer to this question, says: This is a question which | 
has been put to me again and again in the country, and I always endeavour to” 
answer it in a way that will give confidence. It is, of course, quite a mistake” 
to consider that the application of manure exhausts the land by stimulating it. 
You will exhaust it if you continue eae it year after year without returning — 
to it some of the plant food the crops take out of it. If you manure judiciously, 
there is not the slightest fear of the land being rendered ultimately barren. 
This can be proved to the greatest sceptic by the work of Lawes and Gilbert, at 
Rothampstead, where every year for 60 years a crop of wheat has been put in-— 
The average obtained has remained from 40 bushels to 43 bushels. i 
The land gets a heavy dressing of phosphates, nitrogen, and potash, and it | 
is better than when they started. The only thing is that it is rather more” 
difficult to keep clean of weeds. j 
People who have axes to grind are selling guano or other manures, and they | 
tellthe people that if they continue using super. alone the land will become barren. | 
To a certain extent it is true, because by taking heavy crops year after year, and i 
only adding phosphates, you might exhaust the nitrates and potash, but then all 
you have to do is to add these also. You can easily find out what is required by 
a few experiments. All the same, I know of one place where five crops were 
grown in 12 years on the same land with nothing but superphosphate, and they 
got an average of 20 bushels. f 
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