"Of late years the export of wheat has fallen off, owing to the competition of India and America in the markets of Europe; the wheat-farms of New Zealand are so unprofitable that the owners talk of putting much of their ground into grass, though they will continue the cultivation in order to supply enough for home consumption and to employ the machinery they have on hand.
A STEAM THRESHING-MACHINE.
"The open country of South Island is admirably adapted for wheat, and the soil is so easy to manipulate that double-furrow ploughs are used. The large farms are provided with all the latest improvements in machinery and implements; and we found the intelligent farmers thoroughly familiar with American reapers and mowers, steam threshing-machines, steam wagons, and other things, so that we felt quite at home. They asked us about the wheat-farms of America, and were inclined to shake their heads when we told them of fields so large that a plough could only turn a single furrow around one of them in a day's time.
"'Do you really mean it?' said one of them, with an emphasis of surprise.
"Doctor Bronson assured them of the correctness of the statement, and added that on the Dalrymple farm in Dakota, or rather on one of the Dalrymple farms, there was a single field of thirteen thousand acres. 'That makes,' said he, 'about twenty square miles, and I doubt if you have any team that could plough more than one furrow around such a field in a day.'
"They acknowledged that such was the case, and though they had fields containing hundreds of acres inside a single fence, they had nothing that approached the wheat-fields of Dakota. We were sorry afterwards that we mentioned our enormous wheat-fields, as we thought it set them to thinking of American competition, and the effect it might have on their own business in future; but of course we couldn't resist our national tendency to 'brag' a little.
"Afterwards, when we were visiting a dairy-farm, a matter-of-fact Scotchman who owned the place remarked that he presumed we had much larger dairy-farms in America, as he had heard of one where they had a saw-mill which was propelled by the whey that ran from the cheese-presses, and also a grist-mill operated by buttermilk!
"In the wheat-growing belt of South Island there is a scarcity of timber, the forests being mainly in the hilly and mountain region. The scarcity of timber has led to the planting of forests. Considerable attention is given to this both by the authorities and by individuals, and good results are predicted at no distant day. There is also a scarcity of water, and to meet it irrigation-works have been constructed, as already stated.