CuKL. — On Grasses and Fodder Plants. 391 



which grows a very large quantity of nutritious herbage to the acre, in rich 

 land often as much as forty tons to the acre, which will feed milking cows, 

 fattening bullocks or sheep, horses and other animals, or if allowed to ripen 

 its seed will yield a great quantity, often ninety bushels of clean grain to 

 the acre, which will grind into a white flour that is much used in India, 

 California, and elsewhere. 



Sorghum halejyensis is a white-seeded kind with heads that remain upright 

 and do not droop ; this is an excellent sort for saving for ripe corn, and 

 when ground into meal its white flom- is of good colour and taste, and con- 

 tains those elements that mark it out as a valuable food-plant. In China 

 and other parts of Asia, where it is grown, it is considered a valuable 

 cereal ; and I think would be a valuable plant both for its corn, and also as 

 a fodder plant, as the domestic animals will eat it green or dried. 



Sorghum saccharatum. — The several varieties of this grass that I tested 

 from various parts of China, Thibet, and other parts of Asia, were more or 

 less hardy at first, and the first growths contained different quantities of 

 sugar in their expressed juice and in their tissues, as proved by either fer- 

 menting and calculating the distillates of alcohol, or testing them by 

 chemical re-agents ; but after a few years sowing their hardiness increased, 

 or they adapted their growth more to our seasons and climate, while the 

 amount of sugar they developed, showed that many of them were most 

 valuable fodder plants, and would rapidly fatten animals, either cut green, 

 or when preserved in pits, or silos, and that the enormous quantity of 

 herbage per acre they i^roduced, would repay the trouble and labour taken 

 to grow them, by the meat and milk they would produce. 



Broom Corn. — A variety of Sorghum vulgare produced by selective culture 

 in America, can be grown here and furnish the broom-makers with the 

 parts they require, that is the expanded panicle ; both the large and dwarf 

 varieties ripened seed with me, but as they are not so excellent as a fodder 

 plant as some other varieties, and although pigs, fowls, and other domestic 

 animals eat the seeds, yet the other varieties are better for the meat and 

 milk producer. 



A variety of Imphee, called Red Imphee or Siberian perennial, grows well 

 during the hot weather, and being hardier than the other Imphee, may be 

 recommended, as it gives a large quantity of fodder dm-ing the summer and 

 autumn here, and will be even better further North. 



The hardy sugar-cane, developed and grown in Minesota, and called 

 " Kennedy's Amber Minesota," grows well as a fodder-plant here, and the 

 quantity of saccharine in it makes it much relished by hve stock, and soon 

 fattens them ; while the farmers can obtain a syrup from its juice which 

 will answer the purposes to which sugar is often appHed, and in the warmer 



