116 
On Green or Fodder Crops. 
provide heavy crops of green forage for cattle and sheep at the 
latter part of August and throughout September and October. 
Mr. H. AI. Jenkins has so comprehensively treated on the 
cultivation of sainfoin and lucerne in France and other parts of 
the Continent in papers which have recently appeared, that 
although they are among the most valuable of our green-crops 
not commonly cultivated, the space at my command will be best 
utilised by confining the present inquiry to the claims of cabbages, 
thousand-headed kale, sprouting broccoli, kohl-rabi, green maize, 
gorse, and prickly comfrey. Lucerne and sainfoin pre-eminently 
deserve to receive greater attention from British farmers, and to 
have a more widespread adoption ; and several other plants 
might be added to the list, but the present paper must be con- 
fined to the products about which the farming community stands 
in greatest need of information. 
Carrots and parsnips may both be regarded as crops not com- 
monly cultivated, the superiority of which for many stock- 
feeding purposes has been proved over and over again. But so 
much has first and last been written about the former, that it 
would be only repetition to point out how excellent carrots have 
been found to be for horses and milch cows in the winter. The 
fact is tolerably well known also that the large white Belgian 
and other kindred varieties will often yield on stonebrash and 
gravelly soils, not very kindly for swedes, quite as heavy pro- 
duce as of the last-mentioned crop. As for parsnips, they are 
well known to be far richer in nutritive properties than any 
other roots grown for the feeding of stock, but the labour and 
expense of digging a crop out of the land after being grown are 
50 great, that the adoption of parsnips into legitimate British 
farming can never be expected to increase very much. 
The lupin is a plant with which English farmers are less ac- 
quainted than either of the preceding, although it is grown exten- 
sively on the Continent, and considered specially well adapted for 
poor arid soils. In vol. xxi.. First Series, of the 'Journal,' published 
in 1860, there is a well-written article on this plant by Dr. 
Voelcker, followed by an account of Mr. J. W. Kimber's expe- 
rience in cultivating it in Oxfordshire. Dr. Voelcker's conclu- 
sions were, that "green lupins are a useful crop, which must be 
grown in England with much advantage on poor sandy soils on 
which clover, sainfoin, and other kinds of produce do not succeed 
well ;" and that yellow lupins are also " useful as a green-crop 
for sheep and cattle." Mr. Kimber, in the wet summer of 18G0, 
endeavoured to save his lupin-crop for seed, and when he found 
the season so unfavourable, fed it off. He said, " 1 think the 
crop is likely to prove valuable on light sandy soils, where there 
is a difficulty of getting large crops of the ordinary farm plants. 
