FARM DEPARTMENT. 119 



value from those familiar with it. He gave an address at the farmers' 

 institute at Grayling, in January, 1887, in which he said: 



Spurry is an annual which grows wild in Great Britain,^ where it is usually called a 

 weed. In Belgium, France, Jutland and Russia it is grown as a forage crop and for 

 hay. In France its yield is estimated to be about equal to a crop of clover, or 7,700 

 pounds per acre. The seeds are fed to cattle and horses, and are thought to be about 

 equal to rape cake in value. It is a quick and rapid growing crop, which in five or six 

 weeks gains its full height of twelve to fourteen inches, and it is said to be a valuable 

 feed for cows, improving the quantity and quality of the butter. Sown in the middle 

 of April with seed at the rate of fifteen to twenty-four pounds to the acre, it matures 

 the last of May, and a second crop may be grown. * * * It has been called the 

 clover of sandy soils. {Report Michigan Board of Agriculture, 1887, p. 329.) 



Swartz, a well known and influenti^ writer on agriculture in Germany, 

 in his account of the Belgian husbandry, says: 



Without spurry, the Campine, the best cultivated soil in the world, would have been 

 still a desert. A plant like this, which requires no manure of itself, and which, even 

 when mown, by the residue it leaves, gives back more than it takes from the soil; 

 which demands no fixed place in the rotation, but which is satisfied to come in as an 

 after crop whenever the soil is at liberty; which, except for the seed, requires no 

 preparation; which is satisfied with a soil on which nothing else but rye will grow; 

 which increases the quantity of milk and butter, and improves their quality, and which 

 I am persuaded may be raised with advantage, even on the best soils, provided only 

 they are somewhat light, is of the greatest value. A proof of this is the land of Waas 

 (Waesland in Flanders), the garden of Europe. 



Von Voght, another acknowledged authority, is quite as enthusiastic in 

 regard to the value of spurry on light, sandy soils. He says of it: 



It is better than red or white clover; the cows give more and better milk when fed on 

 it, and it improves the land in an extraordinary degree. When sown in the middle of 

 April it is ripe for pasture by the end of May. If eaten off in June, the land turned 

 flat, and another crop sown, it will afford pasture in August and September. This 

 operation is equivalent to a dressing often loads of manure per acre. The blessing of 

 spurry, the clover of sandy lands, is incredible when rightly employed. 



In the Keport of the Department of Agriculture, Washington, 1864, on 

 page 299, is an article by John F. Wolfinger, on "Green Manuring and 

 Manures." Of spurry he says : 



Spurry is an annual plant extensively cultivated in Germany and in France as a winter 

 pasture for cattle, sheep and hogs, and milch cows and sheep fed on it yield, according 

 to Von Thaer, of Germany, superior milk, butter and mutton. For w^inter pasturage 

 it is usually sown broadcast on the harrowed stubble of grain crops just removed from 

 the ground, but it may be and often is, sown in the spring for spring and summer 

 pasture. It is most admirably adapted to sandy soils, so much so that it has been 

 called the " clover of sandy lands." It will grow well on sandy soils that are too poor 

 dry and thin to bear clover, and will also if sown in March, and then again in May, 

 and afterwards in July, produce three crops upon the same field in one season. These 

 three crops will, if successively plowed down to the depth of three or four inches, 

 renovate or strengthen a poor or barren soil to such a degree that it will now bring 

 clover or a crop of winter grain. Hence spurry is largely grown in Belgium, Germany 

 and Denmark as a fertilizer, and also as a valuable forage for cattle, both in its green 

 and in its dried state. 



When, in the spring of 1888, Dr. E. C Kedzie consented to take charge 

 of a part of the experiment work at Grayling, he imported, through a 

 seed house in New York, some spurry seed from Germany, and had it 

 sowed on the light sand at Grayling on the 17th of May of that year. The 



