FARMERS' NEW MACHINES.
I spent an hour or two this week in talking with an expert and enthusiastic believer in the Deus as machine. He sees- the reconstruction of farming, not least of grain-farm- ing, and the solution of most of its difficulties in the perfection of the machine. There is one little sum which it is quite difficult for the most deeply depressed of farmers to dispute.. With the best machinery wheat can be produced at 25s., perhaps 20s., a quarter (Lord Lymington says at 17s.). The fanner will receive 45s. under the quota ; and even on poorer soils the average ought to be four quarters to the acre. Last year I saw on a once derelict farm a crop that yielded over six quarters. It sounds altogether too good to be true that a wheat farm of 1,000 acres could—on these figures—yield a profit of £8,000 in the year ! It is too good to be true ; but the margin is immense ; and it is at any rate a reasonable likelihood that there will be money in wheat. In order that such figures may be approached the area must be big and so capable of being fanned by the big, wholesale machinery, such as the Clayton harvester, which cuts, threshes and, bags at one and the same process and time. But this limitation may be of the very best omen, for it will give special. value to the wide and now almost derelict acres, of which the Marlborough uplands are perhaps the best example.
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