yet been eaten out. It goes right down into the so-called clay, which people blame so much. We put down an auger five feet into it not so long ago, and there were fibrous roots right down into the stuff. The formation of the country is no different at Harvey from what it is anywhere else. What Harvey wants is proper drainage. Without that, none of the settlers will be unable to pay or anything like that. With proper drainage, they will be able to go ahead as fast as they choose. It does not matter about seepage. I have a main channel running through two 10-acre blocks side by side. The year before last it ran for six weeks without stopping, and it made no difference whatever to my trees, which were all dotted along actually sticking in the water. The water gets away quickly from my land, and so does not get cold or rot the roots. The water does not lose its latent heat. If one gets the land soaked with water, and then the night comes, or a cold day comes and the water loses its heat, it is reduced to an abnormally low temperature, to which the roots of the trees are not accustomed; and with that the roots become chilled and are killed. The thing is to get the water away as fast as it pours on. In that case one could pour on water by the million gallons, and it would not, comparatively speaking, make any difference, so long as the soil was not washed off. What Harvey needs is a sufficiently rapid drainage, and to get that one must get sufficient depth. There is a fall of 70 feet right through Uduc. That is where the water should be drained to, instead of into the Harvey River, where there may be an increased depth of six feet, which is not worth twopence. To drain the water into the Wellesley River would be of some help if it could be done. I was the one at Harvey who first moved in connection with the drainage, and who first moved in connection with irrigation. One hears a lot about Yanko. I took the trouble to go there last Christmas 12 months. I asked only one question everywhere, "What about your drainage?" It has already been proved that they cannot grow Lucerne there, and they certainly had mighty little of citrus fruit that was doing any good. The streets were bogs, and where there was a bit of a hollow in a hill the bottom of the hill was a pool. Five millions of money have been spent there just to bring the water along, and my absolute belief is that the place is going to be a rank failure for want of drainage. All the settlers shrugged their shoulders when I asked about drainage. I have at my house some old but very interesting books showing how irrigation systems were given up all over India. They all thought that putting on water was sufficient, without provision for drainage. The result was that every one of those schemes—and they are to be found in India by the score—turned out a failure. The land turned into a swamp in the course of a year or two, and had to be abandoned. The writer of the book I have in mind, himself does not recognise the cause of the failures; he does not even suggest the necessity for drainage. Beyond Mildura there is a place called Merbin; and, incidentally, between Mildura and Merbin there is a flat plain. All that plain used to be planted a few years ago, and it all had to be abandoned because it could not be drained. Now it is simply a clay pan. When one gets to Merbin one comes to a country like our North-West for the character of soil. It is that fine, loamy sort of soil; and it is undulating, hilly country. Underneath it is a gravelly subsoil mixed with surface earth; quite good stuff; and that is for a good depth. Even there the people have to find an outlet for their irrigation water. I asked them about it. I said, "You never have to bother about drainage here, at any rate." They said, "Don't we?" They found that at a certain depth, something like 80 feet, there was a sort of sand bed, and the drainage has to go down into that sand bed. Merbin is exceptionally prosperous, growing currants and raisins chiefly. The rest of it does not matter. The point that impressed me was to think that in a climate such as that, with 112 and 120 degrees an every day occurrence in the summer, they should absolutely have to drain their irrigation water away in order to make their vines a success; and this with a sloping and undulating country. How much more do we need it in a place like Harvey! that place is being spoiled while there is an outlet into the sea with a fall of 70 feet. As regards the clay, it does not matter what the clay may be like; it becomes aerated in two or three years. The heat of the summer sun makes soil of the clay.

12341. Is there much of that low-lying land to which you refer with respect to there being drainage difficulty in the Harvey area?—Yes. There are all the low lying blocks. The whole of the Harvey land lies rather low, and there are numbers of blocks which are low for irrigation purposes. That is why they become waterlogged. People call it seepage, but it does not matter what it is called. It may be from the channels, or it may not; but my opinion about it is that the drainage is not sufficiently rapid, or the seepage would not matter. Suppose this idea of cementing the channels was carried out. It might represent, in my estimation, perhaps three per cent. of the damage; and the other seven per cent. is because of the water not escaping quickly enough. I say that for this reason, that on my blocks, where the seepage is just as great as on any other person's blocks, and where I have two 10 acre plantations side by side and a main irrigation ditch running through it to supply all the people along the area down below, so that it runs for a full fortnight and then stops for a fortnight, I get no seepage. Of course, I do get seepage, but it has never done me any harm. As a matter of fact, it does me good.

12342. You mean that there is some escape from the channel?—Yes, of course, just as much as there is anywhere else; but I am high enough to get rid of it with sufficient speed.

12343. Your idea is this, that if the whole of the channels had been lined, the subsequent difficulties would have been the same?—That is my absolute opinion. Here and there there might have been some portion bad that should be cemented, but my opinion is that if you cemented the whole of the drains, I cannot see how they are going to rectify the trouble; they may rectify three per cent. of it, but the remainder cannot be rectified unless the water escapes more rapidly.