FORESTRY AND FARMING.
At one of the evening lectures in connection with the late Edinburgh Forestry Exhibition, Mr J. Meldrum spoke of the ‘Johore Forests’ which are situated in the Malayan Peninsula between the British settlements of Singapore and Malacca. The greater part of the interior, he said, consisted of a virgin forest, and abounded in timber trees of a large size, no fewer than three hundred and fifty specimens of which were to be seen in the Forestry Exhibition. About three hundred kinds awaited the advent of the papermaker, who would be able to convert them into useful wood-pulp at a very low cost. Railways were required to make this wealth of timber available for commercial purposes.
Another lecture by Mr Cracknell at the model of the Manitoba Farm embodied some interesting information regarding the Canadian north-west. The Bell Farm in Qu’appelle he described as the largest farm in the world. There were eight thousand acres under crop, five thousand under wheat, and a portion of the remainder under flax. From this farm, ten thousand bushels of wheat had been exported at a good price last year; and this year’s crop was estimated to be forty per cent. better. The estimated wheat acreage this year in Manitoba is three hundred and fifty thousand; and in the north-west territories sixty-five thousand, with an estimated yield of twenty-three bushels an acre. There was thus a total of four hundred and fifteen thousand acres, and nine million five hundred and forty-five thousand bushels; but deducting two million seven hundred and sixty thousand bushels for home consumption and seed, there remained a surplus of six million seven hundred and eighty-five thousand bushels. There is little consolation here for the British farmer, who finds wheat-growing at the present low prices positively unremunerative.