112 



A DISCOURSE 



I500K II. diligently clipped, which will render it a very thick, excellent, and beau- 

 ^^'^'^''^^ tiful hedge ; otherwise permitted to grow at large, it will yield very good 

 faggot : it is likewise admirable covert for wild fowl, and will be made 

 to grow even in moist as well as dry places. The young and tender tops 

 of Furze, being a little bruised, and given to a lean, sickly horse, will 

 strangely recover and plump him. Thus, in some places, when they lay 

 down their barren grounds, they sow the last crop with this seed, and so 

 let them remain till they break them up again, and during that interim, 

 reap considerable advantage: would you believe (writes a worthy 

 correspondent of mine) that in Herefordshire, famous for plenty of 

 wood, their thickets of Furzes, viz. the Vulgar, should yield them 

 more profit than a like quantity of the best wheat-land of England ? for 

 such is theirs. If this be questioned, the scene is within a mile 

 of Hereford, and proved by anniversary experience, in the lands, as I take 

 it, of a gentleman who is'now one of the burgesses for that city. — And 

 in Devonshire (the seat of the best husbands in the world) they sow 

 on their worst land, well ploughed, the seeds of the rankest Furzes, 

 which, in four or five years, become a rich wood ; no provender, as we 

 say, makes horses so hardy as the young tops of these Furzes ; no other 

 wood so thick, nor more excellent fuel ; and for some purposes also, 

 yielding them a kind of timber to their more humble buildings, and 

 a great refuge for fowl and other game. I am assured in Bretagne it is 

 sometimes sown no less than twelve yards thick, for a speedy, profitable, 

 and impenetrable mound : if we imitated this husbandly in the dry and 

 hot barren places of Surry, and other parts of this nation, we might 

 exceedingly spare our woods. I have bought the best sort of French 



to cattle in winter. In his days it seems to have been a favourite plant for those uses.— 

 Mons. Duhamel, in his Elements of Agriculture, speaks much in its favour as winter 

 provender for cattle. " In Normandy and Bretagne, at the beginning of winter, when 

 " the grass fails, they cut the young shoots of this plant to supply the place of fodder ; the 

 " first cutting is in December ; but in good soils it shoots again, and may be continued 

 " cutting without permitting it to blossom, because the prickles are then tender, and a few 

 " strokes of the mallet are sufficient to prepare it as food for horses or other cattle, which 

 " derive good nourishment from it. In countries where they have mills to grind apples, 

 " or seeds from which oils are expressed, these serve to grind the furze with great expe- 

 'Mition." Vol. II. p. 124. From a Memoir inserted in the fourth volume of the "Present 

 State of Husbandry in Scotland," it appears that in the county of Aberdeen, they make 

 use of bruised whins for winter fodder, and find them to answer well both for horses and 

 oxen. 



