66 FiILicinE#.—ALG&, 
wood of the Yew, Taxus baccata (horses and cows especially), whereas 
its red berries are edible and harmless, as are the seeds of other Taxinex 
(Ginkgo biloba, L., &c.). Many conifere yield resin or turpentine, and 
others valuable timber. 
Cryptogams or Flowerless Plants. 
Finicinez (FErn F amity). 
The Ferns include but few plants useful or injurious to agriculture. 
Bracken Fern (Pteris aguilina, L., &c.), is a cosmopolitan plant. Sev- 
eral Victorian species of bracken often give the settler great trouble on 
newly-cleared bracken or scrub land. The spores are blown about by the 
wind, and are always present to start new plants when sufficient moisture 
is available. On pasture land, frequent cutting keeps them down, and 
pigs aid in rooting up and destroying the rhizomes (underground stems). 
Badly infested land can only be cleared by ploughing, harrowing, and 
raking off the rhizomes, and then planting potatoes. Good dressings of 
manure (farmyard with superphosphates and potassic manures) aid the 
crops to suppress the weed, and should be followed by a dressing with 
lime if the soil is deficient in that substance. If timber has been recently 
bumt on the land no potassium will be needed. 
If the rhizomes are fully exposed on the surface, hot, dry weather will 
kill them, but not if they are partly buried. They contain a good deal of 
starch, but also a large amount of tannin, indigestible fibre, and mucilage, 
so that even after steaming they are not good food for stock. They may 
however, be chaffed in with other food, but do not form a good exclusive 
diet, even for pigs. The adult leaves are useless either for grazing or 
fodder, and although the young coiled leaves are more succulent, they 
contain too much tannin and mucilage to be at all palatable. 
Bracken land is usually deficient in some one or more sespects as 
regards the requirements of ordinary agricultural crops. It may be badly 
erated, and needing loosening and drainage, or overcharged with or de- 
ficient in humus, and lacking nitrates, phosphates, potash, or calcium (lime). 
Tf the crop is to flourish, and not the bracken, the deficiency must be 
made good by drainage, ploughing, stirring, and manuring, the land being 
cropped and cultivated till clean. Then, if desired, it can be laid down 
in grass or clover, or a mixture of both. 
The rhizome has been used roasted or ground as food, or mixed in 
bread, in Japan, Russia, and Europe, and an extract was formerly em- 
ployed for diarrhoea and worms. It is an allied plant, however (Aspidium 
filixmas, Sw.), the extracted oil of which is the officinal specific for tape 
worm. 
Mosses AND LicuEns, though of great importance in the formation of 
soil, and as humus producers, have little or no immediate value to agri- 
culture. Lichens (Ramalina, &c.) sometimes become so abundant on old 
trees as to injure or kill them. Cutting away infested branches helps to 
keep them down, and spraying with Bordeaux mixture (copper sulphate, 
12 Ibs.; quicklime, 8 Ibs. ; water, too gallons) is of some use. Young 
vigorous trees are rarely seriously affected. : 
Atc&.—Many of the green forms are often troublesome by fouling the 
water of tanks and ponds exposed to the sun. If the bottom of the pond 
is kept clean thev give no trouble, and in moderate amount affect the 
purity of the water but little. Many forms (Sirogyra, &c.) are highly 
sensitive to sulphate of copper, but the additions of even small quantities of 
this poison to water intended for drinking is inadvisable.» If it is used, 
quicklime should be added subsequently to aid in carrying down any copper 
sulphate remaining in solution after the alga have been poisoned, but 
cleaning out the pond is a far more simple and effective remedy. 
