94 RASPBERRY HAY. 



far better stay at home. America is not a good home for 

 idlers. Second^ That, if the emigrant has capital, he 

 ought to spend a little time in looking out for an ehgible 

 settlement before he fixes on a permanent home. If he 

 have no capital to spare, let him go to service for a sea- 

 son, asking moderate wages till he learn where he can 

 hope, with his small means, most happily to place himself. 



In the wilderness, on burned land, besides the fire- 

 weed, the red wild raspberry, Rubus strigosus^ springs up 

 in vast abundance, and especially on granite and trap- 

 pean soils. At Duncan's, I found it was the practice to 

 eat this raspberry, and store it as hay. It is a kind of 

 famine feed ; but it is very frequently mixed with the 

 hay, and the sheep are said to prefer it to common hay. 



On the marsh-lands about Gagetown, on the St John, 

 the smooth swamp horse-tail, salt-rush, or pipe-rush, 

 Equisetum Umosum^ is largely cut for hay, as I believe is 

 sometimes done in Great Britain. On the St John, 

 cattle are said to fatten upon this hay, and to prefer it to 

 the best English hay. In connection with this fact, I 

 may mention that the field horse-tail, Equisetum arvense^ 

 according to Professor Torry,* is a favourite and nutri- 

 tious food for horses towards the passes of the Kooky 

 Mountains ; though in Great Britain it is not only con- 

 sidered prejudicial to the land — or rather a sign of some- 

 thing to be cured in the land — but as injurious to cattle, 

 which occasionally eat it-t 



The flowed intervale lands abound also in the sensitive 

 fern, Onoclea sensibilts. Upon the Keswick Biver, where 

 I crossed it in returning from Woodstock, it seemed 

 literally to cover the soil. It is cut along with the grass, 

 and must often form a considerable proportion of the 

 meadow hay. 



At the end of the portage we descended a steep hill to 



* Botany of Neio YorTc, vol. ii. p. 481. f Hooker. 



