156 
Strata as Food for Stock. 
in littering. In the neighbourhood of commons it would not be 
difficult to make a large rick of fern, and, in districts bordering 
marshes, sedges, flags, and rushes may be collected cheaply in 
almost any quantities. A great deal of rubbish on the farm 
itself might also be utilised for littering. Some years since, 
having to clear a piece' of very foul land, I had a great many 
loads of the weeds carted to the homestead and thatched over, 
and these proved a serviceable store for littering purposes the 
next winter. Trimmings of banks and fences might be pre- 
served in the same way. Peat is also used largely for litter 
where it is close at hand, and the small farmers of one district 
in Belgium are said to entirely litter their cattle with parings 
taken from the surface of the common lands adjoining their 
farms, consisting mostly of heath-plants and the soil attached to 
their roots. 
Sawdust seems to be almost the only substitute for straw 
deemed suitable for the stable ; but I am not sure whether dry 
earth might not be made available for this purpose. Mr. Joseph 
Blundell, of Southampton, has recommended a plan of having 
an excavation, 2 feet deep, in that part of the stable where the 
horses stand and lie, always filled with dry earth to be renewed 
as often as seems necessary. This forms, he says, a bed quite 
soft enough for them, and he considers that horses are less liable 
to be affected with diseases of the feet than when they are littered 
with straw. 
A great deal of litter might be saved in stables and cow-houses 
by having the floors paved, so that the urine would pass off 
rapidly by traps, and thus be carried away to tanks. One of 
the most perfect devices of this kind that I have seen is at the 
stables of Mr. Whiteley, at Bayswater, who does an immense 
trade in drapery and almost everything else the public requires 
to buy. He keeps more than a hundred horses, and his stables 
are admirably paved with hard blue paviors, each of which has a 
raised surface of eight small squares, with deep interstices. The 
pavement is all over in these small diamond-shaped blocks, and 
as there are two traps to each stall, one in the centre and one 
just behind the horse, the urine does not remain an instant for 
the litter to soak in. 
The idea seems worth being thrown out as a suggestion 
whether Mr. Blundell's system of using dry earth or ashes might 
not be combined with partially sparred floors in cattle-houses 
where beasts are tied up by the neck. All the floors from the 
crib or trough back to about where their hind-legs come, might 
be excavated a foot or foot-and-a-half deep, and such excavations 
in a framing of wood, be kept filled up with dry earth. Behind 
this two or three stout spars might be laid down with openings 
