There can, I think, be no doubt that the cockatoo of South Australia is a very bad farmer,--and that he is so because he has hitherto been able to make a living by bad farming. With reference to the amount of produce, it must be admitted at once that the existing combination of soil and climate in the colony, though it has shown itself to be favourable to the growth of wheat in a country of vast area, is not only unfavourable to heavy crops, but is prohibitory in regard to a high average. Every now and then an average produce of fourteen bushels to the acre may be obtained, as in 1864 and 1867,--and there are districts in the colony in which the produce has on such years exceeded twenty bushels to the acre. In 1867 the average in the Robe district was twenty-three bushels to the acre. But there are, at any rate at present, sources of injury to the wheat crop which make the business of farming very precarious. In one year the red dust will almost destroy the crop, in another year,--as happened during the harvest-time of 1872,--the year last past,--a cloud of locusts will come and eat up wheat and grass throughout the country. That the red rust might be conquered by skill in farming at some future time is probable. And it is not impossible that altered circumstances of soil and climate, produced by population and cultivation, may be unfavourable to the locusts. With the drawbacks as they at present exist, the average produce of wheat must continue to be small. But it might probably be very much higher than it is.