Page:The State and Position of Western Australia.djvu/22

 forty-three bushels; and the second year, of very nearly sixty-one bushels to the English acre, without the aid of manure. The latter is a return which farmers consider equal to that of the best land in England, under the most improved culture. Some oats, being the second crop raised from the same description of land, cultivated two years in succession, were, by an experienced farmer, judged by the eye to yield from ten to twelve quarters the English acre. The barley grown in the colony is mostly Cape barley—a large four-sided grain, giving a heavy produce. It makes fine malt, as has been ascertained: for, from a bushel and a half of it (dried in the sun) and one pound of hops, twenty gallons of good ale and fifteen of small beer have been brewed.

Turnips, particularly the Swedish, give a weighty and sure crop. Potatoes produce very fair crops, and, in the alluvial soils, good ones, without manure.

The sandy lands, which have more or less of loam in them, are becoming more valued every year, and heavy crops of wheat and barley have been had from them with the aid of very little manure. Some of the land which gave this return, bore, when in a state of nature, the grass-tree only, and was cultivated solely from its being near the farmer’s residence.

The productive powers of even inferior sandy soils are often extraordinary, and show what the combination of heat and moisture effects in this country. At Perth and Fremantle, vegetables and fruits of fine size and flavour have been produced in sand, without manure. In the former town a radish, growing in sand, was exhibited in 1833, which measured, round the root, more than four feet; and a plant of mangel wurzel, in sandy soil of a better quality, on the Upper Swan, was six feet in circumference.