Queensland agricultural journal Volume 5

admirable health resort, the bracing air, and the cool nights even in the hottest summer, making it a delightful place of residence for an invalid jaded with the heat of the days and the sultry summer nights of the coast country.

Although not an agricultural district, there are several small cultivated paddocks, where lucerne, wheat, oats, barley, maize, and potatoes are grown for home use. The uncultivated portion is hilly, heavily timbered, and stony. The timber consists mainly of box, gum, ironbark, apple-tree, and wattle, the latter of which is in many parts stripped for tanning purposes, the bark fetching from £2 10s. to £5 per ton according to demand.

Sheep and cattle thrive admirably, and, wherever ringbarking has been done, the carrying capabilities of the run have been much improved, and a sheep to the acre, or its equivalent in cattle, is not considered excessive.

The locality is especially well adapted for wool-growing, as will be shown in our next article. Mr. Allan breeds Lincolns and white and black merinos, which are described and illustrated further on.

For the present we are only concerned with the purebred Hereford herd. It may, however, be mentioned that the dairy herd consists of very fine pure and grade Jerseys.

The specialty, then, of Braeside is a large herd of Herefords, numbering over 1,000, which have all descended in direct line from high-class imported English stock. The whole of these are duly entered in the Braeside stud-books, in which they are named, numbered, and pedigreed.

The dams are the lineal descendants of 36 purebred cows with which Mr. Allan commenced operations over twenty years ago. These cows were purchased by him from Messrs. Robertson Brothers, of Colac, Western Victoria, at their great breaking-up sale in January, 1878.

The stud herd comprises 338 bulls, 467 cows, and 278 heifers from seven to nine months old. All these fine animals are well worthy of a visit from anyone interested in stock-breeding.

Mr. Allan kindly afforded our artist, Mr. F. C. Wills, every assistance in taking photographs of them, some of which are here reproduced.

The values of the bulls range from £250 for such grand animals as Horace Wilton (imp.) to £50, £30, and £21 for selected stud bulls, whilst £8 Ss. is the usual price for ordinary herd bulls.

CHARACTER OF HEREFORDS,

They are very stylish in appearance, and plainly show their pure breeding, and, having been born and bred in the cold hard hill country, are perfectly healthy and strong. They are exceedingly lively, yet remarkably docile, allowing even women and children to pass them without notice. To meet a bull in an English meadow is an unpleasant experience, which often ends in disaster to the intruder, but the case is different in Queensland. Bulls running freely in large paddocks are rarely dangerous. Of this the writer had good proof at Braeside. Unknown to him, the three powerful-looking animals shown in our illustration were grazing on a narrow piece of ground between the garden and the creek. He was going along the creek bank, looking out for the trout, when suddenly he found himself face to face with all three. They simply stared at the stranger; and when ordered to " get out of that," they meekly obeyed and retired. Large as are the Herefords here, they increase much in size when sent to warmer pastures. They are, moreover, capital travellers. In colour they are dark-red, with characteristic white faces and bellies, the majority having a white mark on the shoulder, but this last peculiarity is not a sine qua non, as the breeder prefers a minimum to a maximum of white on his cattle, excepting, of course, the predominating characteristic of the white face and belly.

The likeness of all these animals to each other, both in form and colour, is remarkable. They remind one forcibly of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee in "Alice in Wonderland." It is a sight to be remembered to have a close view of two or three hundred full-grown bulls peaceably feeding together, the general opinion of the city man being that bulls, when placed together in a paddock,

spend their leisure time in carrying on desperate battles with each other. As far as fighting is concerned, this herd of bulls appeared to us as tame as a flock of sheep, even allowing the artist to walk towards them with his camera.

It will undoubtedly be of much interest to such of our readers who are engaged in cattle-breeding to examine the pedigrees of some of these grand sires. We therefore append a few culled from Mr. Allan's herd-book.

It should be mentioned that no disease has ever made its appearance in this herd; the country also is perfectly clear of ticks. Still, all the bulls for sale are being inoculated, as purchasers who take them to tick-infested country require this to be done.

No female cattle have ever been added by purchase or otherwise to the herd, except by breeding.

One of the sires in use is Horace Wilton. This grand animal was purchased by Mr. Allan personally from the famous breeder of Hereford cattle, Mr. John Tudge, Herefordshire, England, just after the bull had taken first prize at Lord Tredegar's show at Newport, in 1891, in a class of twenty-two young bulls.