Norwich bulletin., 1915-10-01

only S4,500 paper. The Angus steer, however is in great demand among the establishments that pack frozen beef. Only recently prices in the or dinary cattle markets went as high as $400 paper for this type of steer probably a world record.
 One outcome of the fiourishing state of the grazing industry may be inn provements in the Argentine ranches. With the exception of a few localities, prazing is carried on under primitive conditions, with little application of science and expert knowledge. Argentine is an ideal grazing coun- I.try, but the natural pasture except in privileged zones, is very scrubby. Owing to these visible disadvantages lands were sold by the league in the old times the price being based upon the quantity of stock that could be carried. There are vast extensions, hundreds of thousands of leagues, that are still obtainable at prairie value. The poor settler can no nothing with these lands. He would starve on a league of it if he had not gun to shoot birds. But the rich syndicate or private investor could, and many do, buy with a view to improvement. When this is done pudiciously the re- suits are surprising.
 In this country stock is never housed. Some animals preparing for the show, are raised in special pad- docks, but the animal raised for the butcher rarely sees the inside of building, -or tastes anything but pas ture grass. This out-of-door life ssves expense and. doubtless, avoids some of the cattle diseases. The set tier who purchased land forty years ago at prairie value and put it under alfalfa, is the wealthy estanciero of today. Some of the big estancias have been handed down from father to son, but Argentine law governing success aicr Is altogether contrary to the .5hea the owner dies there is generally 2. diviaion of all his estate among his heirs.
 Tgse great enemy of grazing and az rici:ltTre. is drought and at present 1t is keenly felt in Cordoba, the prin- cipal alfalfa province, where 1t is com plicated by the locusts, a plague which has cost the republic millions to keep down. 1t Is claimed that the depre- dations of the voracious insect are not so great as formerly, but just now it is admitted that the damages being caused are very great. The insects come from Bolivia, Brazil and Para quay. They return to their quarters in those countries after Argentine has spent much money killing a more or less negligible percentage of them and they return in clouds the following
 
 problem is no less complex The re- public is so large. and the natural rainfall is so uneQually distributed that the trouble is endemic in about nine-tenths of the total area. The va rfous schemes of irrigation have cost enormous sums of money and created only an oasis here and there.
 The skilful settler or wealthy es- tanciero contents himself with sink ing wells and erecting windmffls to supply his house and stock, but it is obviously impossible to overcome by artificial means. the heavy handicap imposed by nature. MT. Ross, an American expert who has been tour ing the provinces. suggests a solution. He finds that there are 200 varieties of the cactus natural to the country. He thinks that this plant, deprived of thorns by breeding them out, would solve the difficulty. The cactus will thrive in the poorest soil, and 90 per cent. of it's leaf weight is water. The fibre of the plant is also declared use ful for the textile industry. The al- falfa. however, must still continue to hold the field in literal sense.