OP STRAW, ITS VALUE, AND USES. 393 



most difficult to secure; and it must be of still inferior 

 quality, where it is cut with the scythe, and spread upon 

 the ground, instead of heing put in sheaves, as the air ma- 

 terially injures every species of fodder. Much, however, 

 depends upon custom, for a correspondent informs me, 

 that he feeds his horses, in preference, on barley-straw, 

 and that when he runs short of barley or wheat-straw, his 

 horses do not eat the oat-straw, for a night or two, with 

 appetite. He is convinced, indeed, that the preference 

 given to oat-straw, is not from its intrinsic value, but from 

 the practice of our forefathers in doing so ; and very pro- 

 perly, in those times, as the oat crop was always raised in 

 the worst cleaned land, and full of couch, and other na- 

 tural grasses, which made the fodder better. Barley-straw 

 is said to be still in good esteem in Gloucestershire. f 



Mr Thomson, an intelligent farmer, near Edinburgh, 

 greatly prefers barley-straw. He says, that when well 

 harvested, it is much relished by stock, not being tough, 

 but of a brittle quality, consequently easily eaten, and so 

 sweet, that cattle are particularly fond of it. Some horses 

 are subject to colics when fed on barley-straw, which Mr 

 Thomson entirely attributes, to their getting too much wa- 

 ter after feeding on the straw. Cows or oxen are never 

 affected by it. 



Barley is extremely difficult to save in any tolerable de- 

 gree of order; the straw, when the crop is fully ripe, is 

 extremely brittle, hence the ears are exceedingly apt to 

 break off in handling, but the straw is more easily eaten. 

 That brittleness, however, it is contended, is a sufficient 

 proof, that it contains little nutritive juices; for what would 

 any one think of brittle hay ? 



t Marshall's Rural Economy of Gloucestershire, vol. i. p. 104-. 



