Meritio-Ryeland Breed of Sheep. 505 



intybus) which chooses to live on banks by the road side, and shoots luxuriantly 

 during the hottest and most arid summers. Sheep seem rather to affect bitters, and 

 therefore do not dislike the taste of this plant. It is generally considered as a bien- 

 nial; but I have found it remain many years in the ground, shooting its fibrous 

 roots to a great depth, so that I was unable to destroy it. On a dry, rubbly soil, 

 nothing surely yields such a quantity of herbage. Wishing accurately to examine 

 its produce, I once weighed half a perch of a middle growth, of the second year, 

 which I had suffered to remain uncut till the beginning of July, and found it to 

 be 37 ton 8 hundred per acre. In November I cut and weighed the plants on the 

 same half perch, which amounted to 25 ton 10 hundred. Many of the plants, at 

 the first cutting, were from 6 to 8 feet in height, and the stalks were grown so 

 hard and woody as not to be eatable. My servant had before remarked the same 

 inconvenience, when the sheep were soiled with it ; which would not have happened 

 if they had been placed on it in great numbers, in order to feed it off like clover, 

 or ray grass. That a plant shoots early, and grows so much and so quickly, that 

 one's stock can with difficulty consume it, will hardly, I should think, be attributed 

 to it as a fault. An annual produce of 62 ton 18 hundred of green food per acre 

 is surely very extraordinary ; and, probably, would not have been less, had the 

 shoots been continually cropped in their succulent and tender state, as soon as they 

 sprang. The ignorant prejudices of my servants, and my having lost possession 

 of the field in which this plant had grown, obliged me, at that time, to dis- 

 continue its use ; and now, that I have wished again to try it, I have in vain 

 attempted to procure the genuine seed. 



I have generally provided for my sheep winter and spring vetches, the former of 

 which has been raised alternately with spring cabbages. The latter being finished 

 in May, and the shoots fed off in July, the ground has been sown with winter 

 vetches, which have been folded off by the latter end of May, and the soil left in 

 a very rich state for the immediate planting of spring cabbages as before. 



My manner of feeding and treating my ewes and lambs, during the winter and 

 ^spring, will best appear from that which I now practise with regard to 74 ewes, 

 and as many lambs. Early in the morning they have 56 lb. of hay in cribs, in a 

 grass field adjoining to the farm-yard. At f past 4 in the afternoon, 3^ cwt. of 

 cabbages, cut in pieces, are given them, strewed on the grass in the same field. 

 As soon as it grows dark, they are driven under the sheds, where 28 lb. of hay is 



VOL. V. 3 T 



