9047. I gather that lime is most effective on sour and intractable clay soils?-- There are two distinct uses for lime which seem quite the reverse of each other. Lime is good to break up clay soil and on the other hand is good to bind sandy soil. Then its action on bacterial growth in the soils is very important. In the case of sour, swamp, and acid soils, it acts as a neutralising agent. It has a sweetening and beneficial effect all round and plays an important part in the actual development of the plant.

9048. Can you, as the result of your observations, say whether we are travelling along a safe path in our eastern agricultural districts?-- I should say that experience and knowledge everywhere points to the contrary conclusion. The continuous cropping of soils with one class of crop is only permissible where you have soils with large reserves of plant food. Judging from the opinion as published elsewhere, many of our eastern soils cannot be considered to be richly stored with plant foods, and therefore cropping with one kind of crop must tend to the gradual impoverishment of the soil. Of course, it is not a thing that is going to occur in five, ten, or twenty years, but it is a matter which should be dealt with for posterity. Of course, in this State you are faced with the fact that many of those who are on the land are new settlers and they have to get as much as they can out of the soil to meet their immediate liabilities, and it is not reasonable to expect those men to do anything but work for an immediate return. Speaking from a practical point of view, I do not think that you can immediately alter the present position, but at the same time I think all the advice of the department should be towards improving the methods of agriculture in the direction of mixed farming and the building up of the soils. The experience in every part of the world goes to show the same thing. The commercial aspect of the subject of course has to be considered, so that sometimes you are justified in letting well recognised principles stand aside for a time, but I do not think, if it can be avoided, that the continual dropping with one class of crop is a sound and wise proceeding.

9049. I have made inquiries among the older settlers, where land has been cultivated for any time, and these settlers tell me that they cannot notice any perceptible falling off in the fertility of the soil, but they say that they cannot plough in the summer; the soil is getting harder and harder. To what does that point?-- It is probably due to the fact that the continual working is increasing the solubility of the constituents in the soil, which is the natural result of fallowing and continual working, and when the moisture in which they are dissolved is evaporated the soluble salts are let dry in the soil as a sort of cementing agent. That could be counteracted by increasing the humus and by alternating the method of cropping, i.e., by introducing rotations. That is why the soils in most agricultural countries are allowed to rest and variety of cropping is employed. I do not think any farmer would see a change in his lifetime. Theoretically there may be enough food in a soil to produce a crop for 100 or 150 years. This can be easily calculated, but all the potential food in the soil is not used. It is important how much of this plant food is in an available condition. There may be a lot of plant food there which may be, so to speak, indigestible for the plant. It has to be worked down to become available for the plant, and you must remember that a plant gets only what its roots reach. You may be growing a plant in a certain cubic content of soil, but its roots only reach a certain proportion of the food particles in the soil. You must look at the thing from a physical point of view.

9050. We have all heard through the Press for a long time past, and in our travels we have come across the same subject, that is that crops can be successfully grown on sand-plains. Do you think there is likely to be length in the cropping life of those soils?-- I hesitate to answer that question because "sand-plain" is a name applied loosely to so many varieties of soils. I have seen some sand-plain actually white sand, with an underlying rubble pan. It seemed to me quite useless and could not be expected for any length of time to grow anything; but I have been informed that on soil like that, in such and such a district, that a man has got so many bushels to the acre. I hardly credit it unless I see it, because you cannot think that soil like that will support wheat. One particular case I investigated. The owner of a farm said that he was going to get 16 bushels an acre off sandplain. I went to the district and saw through the crop with the owner. Certainly it did not strike me that he would get anything like 16 bushels an acre, but the man did not like retreating from the position he had taken up; however, he admitted to me at last that in the very best spots, on the edge of the forest country, he would get 12 bushels, but in other places he would not get more than eight, and a large proportion of the field would not be worth cutting. Yet this statement was published in the Press, that Mr. so and so in such a district was going to get 16 bushels off his sand-plain. One hesitates to make statements of this kind because immediately he is told he is crying stinking fish. You have had much more opportunity than I have of seeing what the sand-plain can yield.

9051. Some of the yields are quite surprising, but the question which obtrudes itself in my mind is, will it be permanent?-- It is opposed, I think, to any evidence to suppose that it can be permanent, if there is pure white sand.

9052. There are all sorts of sand-plain, as you say, they vary a great deal. There is sand-plain growing timber, some growing a little white gum, and yet we are told that some of these grow good crops. In the district between Wogerlin and Korrigin there was some miserable light sandy soil on which it looked impossible to grow anything, and I cannot think that it is possible for that soil to last?-- Quite impossible I should think. Is it not reasonable to believe that some of the special results reported are due to particular local and temporary circumstances? Perhaps there has been a particularly heavy rainfall, and that the other soil may have got clotted and would not grow well.

9053. I think that was the explanation?-- There may be particular reasons for that crop. I think it would be very rash to suppose that it would continue year in and year out, or for any time. Some of the white sand-plain has stuck me as particularly barren and hungry looking. These soils have no humus in them, and in some cases down Meckering way there is a kind of