1912.] 



Spurrey as a Forage Crop. 



:o2i 



hay. In his Farm Foods Wolff quotes the following 

 analyses of spurrey : — 



Water 



Crude Albumen 



Fibre 



Nitrogen-free Extract 



Fat 



A«h 



Albuminoids and Amides 



Green. 



Total. 



80 -o 



2'3 

 5*3 



97 

 07 

 20 



Digestibk 



3 '3 

 6-5 

 °'3 



i*5 



Hay. 



Total. 



I6 7 

 I2'0 

 22'0 

 36-6 



3-2 

 9 5 



Digestible. 



13-1 

 237 



i -9 

 7-6 



Very light sandy soils might be considerably improved by 

 ploughing in several crops of spurrey in succession, for it will 

 grow in profusion on sands where many plants would not 

 succeed at all, and its growth is so rapid that two or three 

 crops may be raised in one season. Ploughing in would of 

 course be effected as soon as the weed showed the first flowers. 

 Depasturing the crops with sheep would also be very 

 beneficial on such soils." 



Since the above note was published some further information 

 on the subject has been collected. 



Spurrey is referred to by Johnson and Sowerby in 

 Useful Plants of Great Britain. Aberdeenshire farmers 

 have long held it as a pernicious weed, and this 

 view can readily be understood by anyone personally cog- 

 nisant of the conditions which were to be met with, at any 

 rate thirty years ago, on many farms where the soil was light 

 and sandy. The spurrey grew so luxuriantly as to choke 

 the crop that had been definitely sown, and it can be realised 

 what were the feelings of those who lost a crop of turnips and 

 got instead a crop of spurrey, which they did not aim at and 

 did not know how to utilise. When Johnson wrote in 1865, 

 the plant was grown for fodder in many parts of Europe 

 outside the British Isles, and in various parts of this country 

 also its qualities were rated very highly. 



Many foreign writers have been enthusiastic in recom- 

 mending spurrey as a green manure for sandy soils and as a 

 fodder crop, especially on such soils. Thus in the Dictionnaire 

 d' Agriculture (1892), it is stated that this plant is cultivated as 

 a forage crop in Russia, Germany, and Belgium, but only to 



