404 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. {1 May, 1902. 
HOW TO GROW WATERCRESS. 
Excellent watercress can be grown without running or even standing water. 
The plants should be treated like celery plants. Dig in plenty of good, old, 
well-rotted manure into the bottom of the trenches, and sift a little fine soil 
over it. Dibble the cuttings in at about a foot apart, filling up with rich mould. 
Give the whole a good watering, not a dash from a bucket, but a gentle, steady 
sprinkling from a fine-rose watering pot, which will fall “like the gentle rain 
from Heaven.” In a month or six weeks the cress can be cut. After cutting, 
give the bed a good dressing of manure all over and water well. Repeat this 
treatment at every cutting. Watercress will also thrive well and yield good 
crops if sown amongst weeds on a creek bank or on the edge of a waterhole or 
swamp. 
THE HEALING OF WOUNDS. 
Wounds may heal so long as the sap is circulating, but most readily during 
the late spring and early autumn. Cold and wet, as well as great heat and 
drought, act against the movement of the sap, and in its absence the bark on 
the sides of wounds is liable to be killed. Keep wounds clean and smooth 
if you would have them heal over. Apply no mineral poisons, such as red or 
white lead, or ordinary wood paint. Vegetable oils, lard, or other animal fat, 
or grafting wax, will serve to keep out damp and disease germs, toadstools; 
insects, and extremes of heat and cold ; so that any sap brought to the margin 
of wounds will remain alive to formulate new bark. 
THE ADIRONDACK FORESTS. 
The College of Forestry, connected with Cornell University, is defended 
by Director B. HE. Fernow in answer to misstatements made recently in the 
Wew York Times. Instead of “denuding” 500 acres of Adirondack land, it 
has “cut over” this area; and it planted 255 acres out of 300 acres requiring 
replanting, though some of the “cut over” territory cannot be planted the 
same year. The purpose of the forester is so to arrange this whole 30,000 
acres that it can be harvested continuously ; growing a young crop and cutting 
out old trees every year. The reproduction of wood crops and earning arevenue 
therefrom are the purposes for which the college was organised. While the 
hunter’s interests are of secondary consideration in the very small part of the 
Adirondacks affected, Mr. Fernow claims that the change from open old 
timber to a young plantation is rather an advantage to the breeding of deer,— 
Engineering News. 
THE AGRICULTURAL BANK. 
The establishment of a State Agricultural Bank is now accomplished, and 
three gentlemen have been appointed trustees to carry out the provisions of the 
Bill. The object of the institution is to help intending settlers on the land. 
The main provisions of the Agricultural Bank Bill are as follow:—The 
sum of £250,000 is to be raised by Government debentures for the pur ose; a 
manager and trustees are to be appointed by the Governor in Council ; aa 
from the bank to borrowers may be made up to £800, which loans will be 
secured by mortgages upon the land and by first mortgages only. Interest ig 
to be paid by the borrower at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum for five years. 
Haltf-yearly payments of £4 Os. 8d. will be required for every £100 lent, and 
the whole amount advanced will have to be repaid within twenty years after the 
five years’ period has expired, but any borrower able and desirous to repay 
before that time can do it. On default of payments the trustees can take 
possession of the land and sell the whole or part of it to meet their demands, 
and failing to secure a purchaser the land will revert to the Crown. 
