proclaim his failure and ruin. Soil crops as a partial remedy may be grown, but the expense and labour of this, compared with the more natural three years, or better still four years, rotation, viz., one year fallow, one year crop, and two years grazing with stock, requires no argument to support it, it is so obvious.

Another somewhat ugly and certainly discouraging feature of this special mallee area must not be held back if future settlers are to honestly understand the situation in front of them, that is, the persistencey with which the mallee, even after being rolled, rolled, burnt, and cultivated for two successive years, if then left with the idea of giving the grass an opportunity to grow, asserts its determination to come again from roots and suckers, and we were compelled to take notice of many areas from 100 acres to over 200 acres in a patch which had been rolled, burnt off, and cultivated for two years, and when left alone for two years were actually as bad as ever, and would require a considerable outlay, perhaps 3s. to 6s. per acre, to slash down and burn off again, for unfortunately there is not anything like sufficient growth of grass to lead a fire to turn off the suckers, and furthermore in very rare instances we did observe the stubble thick enough on the ground to give a running fire to burn back these persevering suckers. This all means that the settler must not roll or burn any larger area than he can handle, for unless he has team strength in horses and labour to keep it cropped for two or three years in succession, then he is faced with the repetition of his pioneer work. Before recurring to the question of salt, we are pleased to be able to report the disappearance of one threatened difficulty, that is in the earlier history of the settlement, viz., the question of dams and tank sites, both for the holding and getting filled. As the many instances we met with, where good dam and tank sites in good holding ground, in which also the catchment insured their being filled during winter, satisfied us that some of the settlers would find tank sites on their holdings, and some of them two, three, or four, which om the future carrying stock and subdividing into sheep paddocks would not be an impracticable problem. though of course the initial outlay and capital required for such improvements might not be lost sight of.

Owing to our apprehensions connected with the question of the undue presence of salt in the soil, we resolved, on our return to Perth, to make full inquiries as to whether soil analysis had been obtained by either the Lands or Agricultural Department, and if so what results. We certainly could hardly bring ourselves to believe that with the disappointing crop results, and with the evidences of saltiness revealing itself to the close and interested observer, that such an obvious and important precaution had been neglected, but what came home to us with even stronger force was the reflection that if such analysis had been made why was it not made known to these venturesome but confiding settlers, who were staking their all, and also an important period of their life's work, in the attempt to develop, make productive, and bring into being an important national asset and source of wealth. The only inference left was that such analysis had probably demonstrated that any apprehension on the ground of salt, detrimental to good crop returns, or the grown of good grass, need not to be feared. After several inquiries, and finally by the kindness of Mr. McNulty and Mr. Sutton, an important file, dealing with Esperand lands, with report by P. V. O'Brien, dated August, 1912, and also a report by the Government Analyst, Mr. E. Mann, of a number of analyses of these Esperance mallee soils, was found and lent to the Managing Trustee of the Agricultural Bank for our information, and though space forbids our commenting upon the whole problem of the settlement and prospects of these Esperance mallee lands, yet some clauses in Mr. Mann's report seem to us so important and vital to the whole subject of the future settlement, and either prosperity or failure of the many brave and enterprising settlers, not overlooking their equally brave, patient, enduring wives, who, fully trusting the good faith and bona fides of all the information published and made known to them, in reference to their future hopes and prospects, having relinquished their future hopes and prospects, having relinquished profitable callings to become settlers, that we must crave permission to add a little further to the length of this report by quoting one or two extracts from his reports dated 17th June, 1912.

Mr. Mann remarks:—"The soils are not rich in humus or decayed vegetable matter, and would probably require consideration on these points in order to reserve their moisture retaining capacity. All the soils are well supplied with lime and potash, in fact the supply of potash is rather a remarkable feature throughout. Generally speaking they made be considered as deficient in nitrogen, and this fact must, to some extent, be associated with the lack of humus. The soils throughout are deficient in phosphoric acid, and, like most of the soils of Western Australia, phosphatic manuring will be required to be a standard portion of soil treatment. Samples 1-3, 7-10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 23-28, that is 18 months out of 30 samples, exhibit an amount of salt which is in excess of that which is generally laid down as the standard fertile soil, viz., .05 per cent., and this is a somewhat serious feature in the soils. It had to be remembered, however, that these were all virgin land, which has not been cultivated, and perhaps the salt might have become unusually concentrated on the surface of the soil, and with drainage and cultivation be sufficiently removed as to be no danger to the crop, and in order to further test the extent to which the soil is permeated with salt, I examined a number of subsoils with the following results. These results were far from reassuring, and confirm the suspicion that the country is generally salt. As the time available would not permit of the detailed analysis of soil received form Mr. Middleton, it was determined just to estimate the amount of salt in all these. The results are shown in Table II., and it will be seen that of 128 samples enumerated, that 96 contain salt above the limit of .05 per cent., while only 32 came below that standard. This, therefore, makes the question of settlement of these lands a very serious matter. I have throughout adopted the standard of .05 per cent. of salt as being in my opinion a reasonable one, although there is a considerable amount of variation amongst authorities on the subject, the limit of endurance for crops being variously stated form .03 per cent. to .5 per cent. The standard I have always adopted here of .05 is the same as that used in the Eastern States of Australia, and is generally confirmed by the experience I have been able to gather in this State, and a low standard is necessary in this State where long summers lead to the concentration of the salt on the surface soil. I can only express the opinion that in the light of the facts disclosed above, and assuming that the standard of salinity I have adopted is a correct one, the settlement of this land must be considered hazardous, unless its adaptability of wheat has first been fully tested by means of fairly extensive experimental crops grown on various parts of the territory."

These words of Mr. Mann's are not only wise but pregnant with practical common sense. Possibly some of the Esperance settlers, tackling the rather formidable proposition of settling these mallee lands, may have known of these warnings and either decided to risk them or disagreed with the conclusions. It is important to note that as agricultural chemists know, and agriculturists realise, that any excess of salt is especially detrimental to the early germination stage of the wheat plant, and this would seem to agree with what we so frequently observed on the holdings, viz., how think the stubble was, often the height and even the ear was fair, but the crop looked so thin on the ground. Mr Mann's report also reveals another rather ominous peculiarity, which in a few instances came under particular notice, viz., whenever by accident a round of the fertiliser distributor missed, the yield was practically nil, and as with the present rate of land carriage from Esperance superphosphate costs round about £10 to £11 per ton, or if using 75 lbs. per acre, about 8s. per acre, it is easy to realise that without railway connection the settlers' case is hopeless. Timber for fencing is another serious difficulty in the mallee belt, so that should the period arrive when a sufficiency of pasture grasses will enable the settler to depasture sheep, the necessity for sheep-proof, and we fear also dog-proof, fencing will mean heavy initial capital outlay.

Should the day soon arrive when, by the aid of scientific methods, of both fallow and dry farming (and we believe that both in South Africa and the dry areas in America these theories have developed into facts), that a payable crop of wheat can be grown on 10 inches of annual rain, we might then some day see that promis-