350 WHIN. [March 



scantling. Though less solid than oak, sycamore is not a wood 

 that warps to any great extent, and therefore is useful for boards. 

 Its clean wliite or mottled appearance, and its capability of taking a 

 high polish and presenting a satiny appearance, make it valuable for 

 modern furniture work, and there is every reason to expect that it 

 will maintain a fair market value, which, considering its rapidity of 

 growth, pays well enough. We therefore strongly advise its use for 

 tlie main crop on poor, strong land, in preference to either oak or ash." 



WHIN. 



THIS despised, because common shrub, whose beauty was once so 

 nobly emphasized by Liiinicus, is again claiming attention for 

 its economic uses. 



It appears from the testimony of a northern farmer in the IrUh 

 Farmers Gazette, that the proper season when furze is best sown is 

 during the last fortnight of March or throughout April; thougli ilay 

 is not too late. If sown at the same time as corn on dry poor slopes, 

 or better still on rich dry land, at 35 lbs. per statute acre, an extra- 

 ordinary crop of little tiny objects, with three small glistening 

 leaves, will appear in autumn, when the corn is removed from the 

 ground. Only weeding is needed during the next summer, when, 

 if properly treated, each shoot should grow straight up without a 

 single branch or offset, the plant in this condition being both most 

 easily prepared and masticated. It is ready for use about 

 November of the year following that in which it has been sown. 

 Mixed with straw or liay, it keeps store cattle throughout the winter 

 in fair condition. A portion of roots as well as the furze should be 

 given to cows in milk ; and horses will require oats as well. It is 

 certainly a decided gain, if water or steam power be readily available 

 to prepare the roots, or to work such new patent masticators as 

 that manufactured by Messrs. M'Kenzie & Sons, Limited, otherwise 

 the manual power necessary to prepare it may far outweigh the 

 food-yielding properties. 



But gorse has been recently proved otherwise useful than as a 

 cattle food. In Brevet Glohotschning ct MuUer, we learn tliat when 

 its stalks are submitted to the action of a solution containing 15 to 

 20 kilos, of lime, with 4 to 6 kilos, of soda to the 400 kilos, of 

 gorse for 5 or 6 hours, they assume the light colour and other 

 external characteristics of flax and hemp when similarly treated. 

 Gorse fibres so prepared may be used in spinning and weaving, 

 resisting moisture well ; while the waste is suitable either for making 

 cordage or paper pulp. Whins whose roots pierce longest into the 

 soil, often for (J metres, yield tlie best fibres. 



