The Great Value of Chicory. 43 



near 30 tons per acre per annum. He had seen chicory 

 flourishing well on clay, loam, sand, chalk, and peat, 

 and has known it sown upon the very poorest spots of 

 poor farms with such success as to prove indubitably 

 the great importance of the plant. If fed off with sheep 

 it would greatly improve the succeeding corn crops. 

 He had known it in the North of Scotland to bear 

 cutting six times in the summer. Pigs are remarkably 

 fond of it. " On all poor lands," Arthur Young writes, 

 " it is of the highest consequence, having no rival. On 

 the very worst soils it is beneficial for sheep, and I 

 may venture to assert that on such a full stock of sheep 

 cannot be kept without it." It succeeds well, he says, 

 sown with barley, or oats, or indeed any other crop. 

 On middling loam he sowed 12 lb. per acre broadcast, 

 on poor soils 15 or 16 lb., but in drills at 9 inches or a 

 foot apart he found 10 lb. to be enough. If sown in 

 drills at a foot apart horse-hoeing he found to be of 

 great value, and this rendered the plant very luxuriant. 

 Chicory he considered to be too succulent a plant to be 

 made into hay on the average of seasons in this humid 

 climate. 



Horses, and hard-worked horses, did well soiled with 

 chicory, and without either hay or corn. It produced no 

 ill effect on milk, cream, or butter. In 1792 a Mr. Dunn 

 fed horses, cows, and hoggs with it, and found that the 

 cows' milk was greatly increased. Chicory should be 

 cut four times instead of three in the season to prevent 

 stalks running up. 



In 1790 a Mr. Martin said that in the drought of the 

 present season he has nothing on his farm that will 

 keep half the stock that his chicory will, though it is four 

 years old. He fed it with sheep, and highly approved 

 of it. The Duke of Bedford expressed a high opinion of 

 chicory. In August, 1796, 12 lb. chicory and 5 lb. trefoil 

 were sown on a fallow, and grazed about Michaelmas 

 for a month with five sheep an acre. In 1797 it kept 

 six sheep an acre from the second week in April until 



