MR. FORSYTH ON GAME PRESERVES AND FENCES. 251 



hard work fed on the leaves and shoots of willow. Cobbet 

 speaks of a goat that was fed on paper, and yielded milk all tlie 

 while ; and recent experiments have proved that the fibre of lint 

 may be made into linen, and after repeated washings and bleach- 

 ings the okl linen is torn into the finest shreds and made into 

 paper ; yet after all these manipulations this pure fibre is found 

 capable of yielding sugar. It is therefore evident that sub- 

 stances hitherto considered unimportant, may be turned to great 

 account, and among these I have the clearest evidence to show 

 that the leaves and spray of trees are most important articles of 

 food for farm-stock, and although we have for many years prac- 

 tised the barking of the oak whilst standing where it grew in 

 May, in order to get the bark at the proper time, leaving the 

 doomed tree to be felled at leisure, yet it seems to have been left 

 for me to state the value of a standing tree, as yielding for fodder 

 leaves and spray, which may be obtained without injuring the 

 timber by felling the tree just before the fall of the leaf. 



The leaves and spray of trees, like the leaves and spray of 

 gorse, must be prepared by bruising, and in some instances by 

 boiling or steaming, and may require to be mixed with other 

 articles of food for the higher order of domestic animals; but it 

 is clearly proved from my own observation, that the goat has a 

 stomach sufficiently strong to digest the leaves and spray of oak 

 and fir trees, and to thrive well on them. My goat has greedily 

 devoured the leaves, spray, and fruit, of the mountain-ash, and 

 seems to relish the spray and leaves of at least twenty species of 

 trees that I have tried her with ; in short, there are few trees 

 that do not yield substances much more likely to be converted 

 into sugar or food than pure vegetable fibre, in the form of an 

 old linen shirt, or an old folio volume ; therefore, trees or shrubs 

 planted as hedgerows or as shelter may be made to yield fodder 

 as well as fence and shelter. 



I purposely avoid speaking here of timber, as that belongs to 

 a different department, and I come to the planting of the highways 

 and hedges on the farm. Now in order to show the construc- 

 tion of an evergreen hedge for shelter, I shall give a section of 

 one, Fig. A. The dyke or bank should be the frustum of a 



Fig. a. 



Donidyke and Evergreen Hedge for shelter, &c. 



