6 AUGUST 1932, Page 12

Personally, my most vivid memory of a year's tour of

the Empire (undertaken chiefly to investigate problems of Empire migration) is of a particular farm in Western Australia. It was owned and farmed by Mr. and Mrs. Pickles of Lancashire and their three sons. They made a good living out of rather less than forty acres of fruit--chiefly peaches, nectarines and apples—and they possessed a hinterland--I think of about 2,000 acres—of trees and bush. In spare minutes they " ring- barked " the trees as the cheapest way to destroy them ; and as the light was let in, the grass grew and there was food for more and more cattle. Behind the intensive money-making plot stretched the imagination of this spacious promise.

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