844 Eradication of Bracken. [feb., 



tion and the severity of the attack of the principal diseases. 

 Preventive measures are taken as far as possible, and informa- 

 tion is circulated by means of publications of all kinds. 



The Board have been furnished with the following note on 

 the occurrence of bracken in Scotland by Mr. James Ritchie, 

 Birkhill, Stirling. 

 Eradication of The Great Strath — Strathmore — in 



Bracken. Scotland, comprising many smaller 



straths and glens, named after the 

 streams and rivulets passing through them, extends in a 

 north-easterly direction, practically from Stirling to Stone- 

 haven, intersecting the counties of Perth, Forfar, and Kin- 

 cardine. 



Seventy years ago bracken was more in use for litter in this 

 strath than it is now, but ferns were not cut to any large 

 extent, except in dry summers, when straw was likely to be 

 short and scarce. 



The pastures then were grazed to a greater extent than they 

 are now by cattle instead of by sheep, and the bracken grew 

 too sparsely for profitable cutting. Experience in those days 

 did not place the manure made with bracken nearly on a par 

 with that made with straw; in this it agreed generally with 

 the conclusions arrived at in the article on the use of bracken 

 as litter in the October number of this Journal. 



Agriculturists in Scotland, however, are more interested in 

 the question how to get rid of bracken altogether, and, in 

 this connection, the change in the prevalence of bracken 

 which seems to have taken place in Strathmore may be of 

 interest. It may be illustrated by the example of one par- 

 ticular farm. 



On the western boundary of Strathmore, near the middle 

 of it, is a mixed grazing and arable farm, carrying some 800 

 black-faced sheep, and requiring three pairs of horses to work 

 it ; and between the foothills here and the arable fields on the 

 lower ground are about 100 acres of grassland, light hazel 

 loam, overlying boulder clay subsoil, which has never been 

 under the plough, and for generations prior to 1840 had been 

 grazed year by year with young black Highland cattle— 

 stirks and two-year-olds. The whole of this area then grew 



