Nearly two-thirds of all the cultivated land of the colony are under wheat every year. In 1870-71 there were 959,000 acres under cultivation in the colony; of these, 200,000 acres were under crops other than wheat; 154,000 were fallow, or laid down with artificial grasses; and 605,000 were under wheat. So that every acre of cultivated land is expected to bear wheat twice in three years. With us the best approved rotation of crops requires the land to give wheat only once in four years. But in fact the expectation and practice of the regular cockatoo farmer demands a crop of wheat every year from his land. The figures above given include, of course, cultivated land of all kinds,--and in all hands. There are agriculturists in South Australia who are endeavouring to give the soil a chance of being permanently productive, and who sow wheat at any rate not more than every other year. There are, too, growers of vines, of potatoes, and hay,--all of whom add their quota to the total of cultivated acres, and deduct materially from the favourable side of the above figures. The ordinary cockatoo knows nothing of the word fallow, and attempts to produce nothing but wheat. Year after year he puts in his seed upon the same acreage, and year after year he takes off his crop. He is the owner of a section of land which may be something between one hundred and two hundred acres,--which is his own, though he has not probably as yet paid for it the entire price. He does his work without any attempt to collect manure, or to give back to the land anything in return for that which he takes from it. He even burns the stubble from his field, finding it to be easier to do so than to collect it, that it may rot, and then be ploughed in. He ploughs his land, sows it, and then takes off his crop by a machine called a stripper, which as it passes over the land drags the corn out of the ear, leaving all the straw on the ground;--so that the corn is, as it were, threshed as it is taken off the ground. His labour, therefore, is very small. This last manipulation of the grain,--which would be impossible in England, where the climate demands that the grain should become dry before it can be taken from the ear,--is made practicable in South Australia by the great heat prevailing when the wheat is cut. The effect of all this is deleterious both to the man and to the land. The man has but one farming occupation,--that of growing wheat. He ploughs, and reaps, and sells; and ploughs, and reaps, and sells again. He employs his energies on the one occupation, with no diversification of interest, and with nothing to arouse his intelligence. Consequently the South Australian cockatoo is not a pushing or a lively man,--though it should be acknowledged on his behalf that he is orderly, industrious, and self-supporting. But the effect on the land is worse than that on the man,--for the land clearly deteriorates from day to day. No practical farmer will require