1 May, 1902.] - QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 385 
¢rop, it should not be planted more than two or three times in succession on the 
same land. The latter should then be put under some surface-rooting crop, 
and fresh land taken in for cassava. 
PREPARATION OF THE FAriNna. 
For a full description of the method of preparation of the farina, we are. 
indebted to Mr. Lewis A. Bernays, who gives the process described in ‘* Rhind’s 
Vegetable Kingdom” in his work on cultural industries in Queensland. 
There is a simple way of preparing it, which a West Indian manager of 
the writer’s sugar plantation demonstrated to him. The cassava tubers were dug 
up and washed. They were then subjected to pressure by passing them through 
the rollers of a small experiment mill. Then the pulp was put into a large frying- 
pan and roasted very slowly, the drying flour being constantly stirred with a 
stick. Gradually the operator worked it into a flat, round cake, about a quarter 
of an inch thick, and when this cake was firm enough to be lifted, a most 
delicious bread was ready to be eaten. 
‘The process in British Guiana, as described by Mr. Bernays, is as follows : 
—The root is rasped on large tin or wooden grates fixed on benches, behind 
which the women employed in making it stand in rows. <A sufficient quantity 
having been rasped for one time—for any surplus would ferment and spoil—it 
is put into long circular baskets of plaited rushes, about 10 feet long and 9 
inches in diameter called ‘“ mangueras.”’ ‘These are hung up with weights 
attached to the lower end, which draw the plaited work tight together, 
diminishing its capacity and squeezing out the juice. When all the fluid is 
extracted the mangueras are emptied of their contents on raw hides laid in the 
sun, where the coarse flour soon dries up. It is then baked on smooth plates 
made of dry clay, with a slow fire below. Thisis the most difficult part of the 
process. The coarse flour is laid perfectly dry on the hot plates, when the 
women, with a dexterity only to be acquired by practice, spread it out in a 
round and very thin layer, nearly the size of the plate it is laid on. This they 
do merely with a piece of calabash, which they keep in constant motion, 
pressing gently every part of the surface, until the heat has united the meal 
into a cake, without in the least altering its colour or scorching it. Their 
method of turning a cassava cake of that size resembles sleight of hand, for they 
effect it with two pieces of split cane without breaking it, though scarcely as 
thick as a dollar, and only as yet half-cemented together, and of a 
substance always brittle, especially when warmed. This bread is very 
nourishing, and will melt to a jelly in a liquid, but it is dangerous if 
eaten in any quantity when dry, as it swells, on being moistened, to many 
times its original bulk. It will keep good for any length of time if preserved 
in a dry place. The expressed juice deposits, after standing for some time, a 
fine white starch, which, when made into jelly, is not to be distinguished from 
that prepared from arrowroot. 
The cassava farina constitutes the tapioca of commerce when heated on hot 
plates, which causes the grains to swell, many of them bursting and the whole 
agglomerating into irregular masses or lumps. The finest are sold as tapioca, 
the intermediate sample being used for starch and for cooking, and the coarsest 
made into flat cakes for bread as above described. 
The plant does not require much moisture except in the early stage of its 
growth, as too much humidity causes the roots to decay and perish. 
ADVANTAGES OF THR Crop. 
Nine staple field crops are produced in Queensland. These are sugar, 
wheat, coffee, rice, maize, potatoes, onions, lucerne, and oaten hay. There are 
other and minor crops, but we take these as most generally grown by farmers 
throughout the State. 
The usual system (?) adopted by the agriculturists as a body is to put 
the whole of the arable land under sugar-cane, wheat, corn, &c. The result 
is that, if the grub in the North or the frost in the South destroys the cane— 
