70 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ave., 1902. 
but the men who use them. These machines are grain gatherers, labour savers, 
to the producer, but they in no way interfere with the storage of food. By cutting 
a certain area with the binder just as the grain is well formal and stacking it ready 
for the chaff-cutter, we have a very good and economical way of feeding the working 
stock, or if this seems too expensive then let the binder follow the stripper and bind 
up the straw, even if it has to be left in the paddock till the grain is gathered in. 
But many who used the reaper and binder are little better off, having wasted the 
chaff and let the stock trample down the heaps of straw. This waste of fodder not 
only applies to our farmers, but to many of our large Western graziers, who often 
tell us of the wondrous growth of grass they have, and who could, without robbing 
the stock of their pasture, make stores for time of need. We think it would improve 
the pasture. The seven years of plenty should provide for the seven of famine. 
But our motto is: Easy come, easy go; and our harvest to-day is perishing stock, 
distracted men, and overdrawn bank accounts. We do not store, but we overstock, 
and we oversell that which we produce, scarcely keeping enough grain to sow our 
land and none for the stock. Many are learning a lesson, very dearly bought 
by the misery and poverty of their stock, and by the downfall and ruination 
of their once bright hopes and prospects, for many an enterprising man is 
thus stranded. We must learn that if we keep fowls, pigs, horses, cattle, or 
sheep, we must provide for them by storage. Our sheep industry in all its 
branches will suffer severely. Our lately developed and profitable dairying industry 
will be wellnigh shaken to pieces, and this should be a. lasting lesson to those engaged 
in it. Cows will not milk without food and water, and the better the food the greater 
the return. On these two lines, storage of -vater and food, will be found the most 
regular and successful way to occupy our land. It will not prevent drought, but it 
will prepare us to meet it so as to minimise suffering and loss. ‘‘ Waste not, want 
not.” Te in this rich land of ours, we practised the first, the latter would not be our 
bitter experience. 
Mr. Dantet also read a second paper on “ Practical Thoughts from the 
Drought of 1902,” which we regret we cannot print in this issue owing to want 
of space. The paper dealt principally with the question of water storage by 
means of wells in preference to dams, by collecting water from the roof of 
railway stations, churches, and public buildings generally, both by private and 
public effort. 
The next paper read was— 
PRICKLY PEAR AS FOOD FOR DAIRY STOCK. 
[By Joun Germain, Ipswich.] 
Shakespeare tells us that “ Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.” 
This is undoubtedly true in a figurative sense, and it is equally true literally that 
droughts and adverse seasons acquaint stock in Queensland with a variety of food- 
stuffs of which they would otherwise know little or nothing. In the earlier stages 
of scrub farming, I have seen cattle, when turned into the clearings after the crops 
had been harvested, strip the dry leaves and their footstalks from the old maize stems, 
and as the winter progressed they would return for the once-rejected dry stalks them- 
selves, till there would be absolutely nothing left for the farmer to burn off when 
preparing the land for the next crop. Later on the poor cows might be seen around 
the hutlike barn, chewing the cores of the maize cobs as they sometimes do bones. 
At the present time (9th May), both cattle and horses may frequently be seen in the 
rivers and creeks feeding on water-grass and other aquatic vegetation not usually 
esteemed by them, while disagreeable and noxious weeds— Noogoora burr, for example 
—are browsed in order to stay the pangs of hunger. It is now many years since I 
first noticed, here and there, an old cow treating herself to a winter feed of prickly 
pear, which, by the way, is fairly well distributed over many parts of West Moreton. 
The animals did not seem to feed indiscriminately over the patch, but to make ap 
opening in a clump and keep to that spot for a considerable time, gnawing away at the 
very thick old stems, from which, perhaps, they could obtain the maximum of food 
with the minimum of prickles. i 
Though the use of this cactus for fodder is not new in the neighbourhood of 
Tpswich, it has never before come into such prominence; but then it must be remem- 
bered that we have had no rain worth speaking of since last October—certainly not 
enough, unless in very specially-favoured localities, to ensure the production of a — 
cultivated crop of any kind. The object of this paper is not an apology for a noxious 
weed, but simply to show to what profitable use it may be put under certain conditions- 
