water all the year round. I value my improvement at £500. They cost me more than that. I have had four crops. The present will be the fifth. I have not had so much success as my neighbours owing to lack of cultivation, having been short of horses and machinery. I put the crop in late using disc implements. Last year I had 40 acres in. There was no fallow. Some of it was disced and some ploughed. The result was about 10 tons. There was no stripping. I have 54 acres in this year and again it has been sown late owing to the necessity for going out to work. I expect 7 or 8 cwt. per acre. I sowed 60 lbs. of super and 50lbs. of seed wheat. I have had assistance from the Agricultural Department to the extent of about £90. this was two or three years ago; then there were seed and super from the Government. My indebtedness to the Government amounts to about £253, including rent and interest paid by the Industries Assistance Board. I have four working horses, A binder, horse works, and chaff cutter, disc harrows, a mallee roller, a five-furrow stump jump mould board plough, a single-faurrow plough and a land roller

I have a cow and a calf three pigs. I am satisfied with my prospects providing we get the railway. We can grow almost anything with proper cultivation. I have grown very nice potatoes turnips, and melons, but such crops are of no use without a railway. I have grown a swede turnip of 13lbs. weight. It grew in clay soil right on the surface. I have seen hives of bees. I have rye growing four feet high. I have grown excellent melons, pumpkins, sugar beet and the like

343. By Mr. PADBURY: What kind of mallee is yours?.—Very little blue mallee, But there is black mallee and the ordinary mallee. The garden is on the latter. It has a little limestone under the surface. The garden is only about one-eighth of an acre. The ground is fairly moist all the year round. I have 50 fowls. The bulk of my debt to the Agricultural Department is for seed and super and rent. I have had nothing outside the Department. Given a railway we could make the farming pay. I would go in for fallow. By way of meat we get turkeys, wallabies, kangaroos and tinned meat, in addition to which we have poultry. I am one and a quarter miles from the railway survey.

344. By Mr McDONALD: Do you know of any sample of soil having been taken from your land?—No, I think the salt theory is only a bogey. The salt has never affected me. (The witness retired) The Commission adjourned.