ties of wheat, whilst we are dealing with whole crops. They discarded the question of drying the wheat owing to the Attagenus undulatus and Rhizopertha dominica working perhaps more in the dry wheat than in damp. We are not troubled with the first pest, as I have before indicated, and only slightly with the second. The Calandra oryzae requires more than 8 per cent. of moisture to work, and as this is the pest that does most damage here I should like for a moment to examine the proposition of drying the wheat to render it weevil-proof. Drying the wheat can only be done by machinery. In America drying machines are part of the equipment of certain elevators known as hospital elevators. The drying, however, is only to get rid of excess moisture, that is, moisture well above the normal, so as to allow the safe storage of the wheat. It would not be practicable to have drying machines at all country receiving stations in Western Australia, and, if it were, it would mean stacking the wheat in sheds at the sidings, as the risk of the wheat getting wet in transit to a central depot could not be taken. As an alternative, the wheat could be dried before stacking at the depôts, but this would necessitate a large number of costly machines that would have very little value when normal conditions returned; also very heavy costs would be entailed in discharging the wheat, putting it through the machine, re-bagging, reloading into trucks, and shunting along to stacking point. The cost of machines required to handle a ten million bushel acquirement, plus the cost of extra handling, would involve an expenditure of about £100,000. This is a very large amount to expend on preventive measures. We would now have our wheat stacked on clean ground in sheds, well dunnaged, and with grain-proof floor. The question, however, arises—would the wheat, pending shipment, take from the atmosphere the moisture that was recently artificially driven out? I am of the opinion that the outside bags at least would readily absorb the moisture. As the wheat would, however, have been put into the sheds free from weevil and the eggs (both having been effectively dealt with in the drying process), it would be a long time before it would be further contaminated. We, as practical men, have to decide whether it would not be a more profitable investment to expend this £100,000 in something more reproductive and certainly more substantial and less evanescent—that is, concrete silos. If concrete silos were built the wheat could be stored with the minimum amount of risk of infection beforehand. Storage in silos is not to be taken as a panacea for weevil, but should the grain become infested it can be readily treated. I would not suggest that sufficient silos be built to accommodate a ten million bushel crop, for this would mean heavily overloading the bulk handling system that would subsequently follow. The maximum amount of storage provided should not be more than one-third of an average crop. As the wheat production of Western Australia must expand, an average crop must not be based on past productions, but on the probable expansion of the future. The construction of silos now would, without a doubt, cost more than in normal times, but they will provide such valuable storage that the extra cost over normal will be more than compensatory, and, when they become incorporated in a permanent bulk handling system, the amount received for storage should enable the capital value to be written down to a fair charge. If we were housing, say, six million bushels in silos, it would be a safe risk to store the balance of the crop under the present conditions in bags at depots, for which with ordinary luck we would be dealing with it either by milling or by shipping before it had been stacked, much more than 12 months. As I consider the bulk storage system the immediate harbinger of bulk handling, its installation at the present time opens up a big field for argument. Without, however, going into the merits or demerits of the question, I would say that the scientific handling of wheat in bulk must in ordinary course of evolution of necessity supersede the obsolete system of bag handling, and it is quite possible that our immediate necessities may be the means of hastening this result so far as Western Australia is concerned. On account of the damage caused by weevil the Minister, on 3rd November last, entered into a gristing arrangement with most of the mills in the State, and since that time, with the exception of stoppages for overhaul, repairs, etc., the mills have been gristing 24 hours per day, six days per week. At present the weevils are ahead of us, but as the milling capacity of the State is very high compared with the crop, I hope, provided the 1917-18 crop remains free from infection, to get up fairly close to the end of the weevily wheat. Once the weevil get going in the 1917-18 crop, however, we will again drop behind. At the present time we have about one and a half million bags of 1916-17 wheat. Probably about 40 per cent. of this is at the present time affected to a greater or less degree. As time goes on it will all become infected unless it is shipped. During the next few months we expect to ship 225,000 bags. If we ship, say, 200,000 bags by January next, which would be about the latest date we could expect to have any of the 1916-17 crop free from weevil, it leaves us 1,300,000 bags to be gristed by our mills. As our average monthly milling is 500,000 bushels, we should have all our 1916-17 wheat out of sight by April next. We will then have to turn our attention to the seven and a half million bushels of 1917-18 wheat held by the Scheme. The turning of our wheat into flour does not get us out of all our difficulties. There are minor pests that attack the flour, but these are not such a pest as the weevil. Our main trouble lies in the keeping of the flour. Experts inform us that after being manufactured eight months it begins to lose its strength. Be that as it may, we have the fact that a small quantity of flour manufactured by the York mill was some time ago built over in the shed at Fremantle and was recovered quite recently after it had been in the shed 12 months; the exact date of milling is not known. Some of this flour was recently converted into bread on our behalf by Kiely, a Cottesloe baker, and the result was a loaf good enough to satisfy the most fastidious palate. This experience, however, cannot be taken as the rule, but possibly should be regarded as the exception. Up to now we have been fortunate in getting tonnage for most of our flour, the present stocks being 25,300 short tons. Whilst he would be a very venturesome person indeed who would attempt to prophesy in regard to shipping, it is probably allowable, in view of the falling-off of sinkings due to submarines and the activities of the shipbuilding yards, to expect tonnage to be freer in the future than in the past. Therefore, we can probably expect that we may get our flour shipped before it deteriorates. We must also bear in mind that a portion of our 1916-17 crop, and the whole of the 1917-18 wheat, are still unsold. The flour we have been making to date is on account of the Imperial Government, and long before our 1916-17 crop is cut out we shall have, as far as this State is concerned, completed our quota of the Imperial Government present order. It is, of course, hoped that the Imperial Government will make a further purchase. If they do not, it will mean that we will be stacking up flour awaiting a purchaser. Even if this should come to pass, it is undoubtedly better to put our wheat into flour, bran, and pollard rather than let the weevil have it. As an alternative to milling the wheat, we could consider the question of killing the weevil by artificial heating by steam, or direct heating, on the lines now being experimented on in Eastern States. To date over £40,000 has been expended there in experiments, a number of different types of machines have been tried, and the end of the work is not yet in sight. The Eastern States are not quite in the same position as Western Australia, as the ratio of their milling capacity in comparison to the size of their crops is not so high as ours, and they cannot cope with the weevil by milling alone. Apart from the high cost of the machines, the incidental expenses involved are heavy. The wheat has to be brought to the machines—an easily transportable, successful machine has not yet been devised—dried, cleaned, loaded up, taken away, and re-stacked on fresh ground, and the risk taken of the wheat again becoming infected and the process repeated. In my mind, there is not a shadow of doubt but that milling is the best remedial proposition, especially if the rates of gristing are reasonable. The best preventive measure is undoubtedly a combination of storing in silos for long storage, and in bags at the depôts pending gristing. 4602-3. By Hon. J. F. ALLEN: What is the capacity of our mills?—In round figures it is 500,000 bushels a month on the basis of 24 hours a day and six days a week work.