Page:Diary of ten years.djvu/264

 246 most fed off. As to the comparative expense of keeping a flock here and on the Swan, I am scarcely able to say, not having kept one at the latter place myself, but two men can keep from 700 to 1000, with an extra hand in lambing time, and two or three at clipping time. I think the country on the average will keep about one sheep to three acres. But as the feed increases by feeding, a larger proportion may be kept hereafter.'

"We are sorry to say that the disease mentioned in our last report as having proved so serious a drawback to keeping flocks on the Swan, has not yielded so entirely as we had hoped it would, to the medicines employed; nor, with all the care of the owner and shepherd, has it been kept off so long as the sheep have remained in those districts of the Swan in which it had before prevailed. But this has hastened the flockmasters here in sending them to the Avon, to which river three individuals have lately removed their sheep, and where there are now no less than eight flocks. It is the intention of more of the principal settlers to send their stock over the hills, when the Government shall have so far improved the roads as to enable them to take over supplies, which for the present, must be taken from their farms on the Swan and the Canning. It is very gratifying to be able to state, that of some of the merino lambs from the Avon, only six months old, killed at Perth, the carcases have weighed upwards of 10 lbs. a quarter, and this after having been driven over in two days.

"As to the number of acres in wheat showing so small an increase on that of last year, we would remark, that the great scarcity of seed prevented more being got in; had it not been for this cause, we can venture to say that it would have been very much greater. Nearly the whole of the land now fallow would have been in wheat, besides a great deal of new land, had seed been procurable. Kaffre-corn appears to be almost entirely superseding maize, the former being found not only