ARTICLES USED AS FOOD. 167 



Whin, Furze, or Gorse. This is an abundant and cheap 

 plant. It is very good green food for horses, and is procured 

 when there is no other. To sick horses it is an excellent 

 substitute for grass, and many will eat it when they will eat 

 nothing else ; but it has been extensively tried as an article 

 of ordinary feeding. It has long been used in many parts 

 of Wales, and of Scotland, and in several of the Irish coun- 

 ties. Mr. Tytler of Balmain was the first, I understand, to 

 publish a useful account of its properties. His essay will 

 be found in the fifth volume, of the Highland Society's Trans- 

 actions. " It appears that, for five successive years, Mr. 

 Tytler fed his farm-horses from the beginning of November 

 to the middle of March, on furze and straw*, with a very mod- 

 erate allowance of oats during only a part of that time. At 

 first oats were given throughout the winter, but afterward 

 only from the beginning of February, and then only at the 

 rate of three pounds two ounces, or about one third of a peck, 

 of average quality, to each ; the daily allowance of furze 

 during the first period being tweny-eight pounds, and during 

 the second, eighteen pounds, with fourteen of straw." 



Furze is generally used on the frontiers of France and 

 Spain ; and the British cavalry while in the Pyrenees, under 

 tlte duke of Wellington, had no other forage. 



According to the Mid-Lothian Report (Appendix No. VI., 

 p. 56), it has been found that an acre of whins is sufficient 

 for six horses, during four months ; that they require two 

 years to produce them ; that horses, with whins, and one feed 

 of grain, were in as good order as with two feeds and straw ;* 

 that all the straw and one feed of oats were thus saved ; that, 

 valuing these at sevenpence a-day each horse, the saving in 

 seventeen weeks amounted on the six horses, to £\1 17.?. — 

 from which, deducting five shillings a-week as the expense 

 of cutting and bruising, there would remain .£13 12s., as the 

 product of two acres. f 



Dry Herbage. — In this country the dry herbage consists 

 of hay and straw. In France the vine-leaves are collected 

 and stored for winter fodder. In the West Indies the tops 

 of the sugar-cane are deemed highly nutritious, after they are 

 dried and sweated a little in heaps. In a season of abun- 

 dance, ricks of the cane-tops the but-ends in, are made in a 



* The " order," I suspect, would be nothing to boast of. 



f British Husbandry, vol. i., p. 135. See also the Annals of Agriculture 

 vol. xxxv., p. 13. Ency. Brit., art. Agriculture. Farmer's Mag., vol. xx., 

 p. 282. Comp. Grazier, fifth ed., p. 559 ; and Quar. Journal of Agric., No. 

 xi. 



