142 
On Green or Fodder Crops. 
The aversion of stock to the leaves of the plant may, it appears, 
be got over by passing them through the chaff-cutter, and then 
mixing the pulp up with something else. By taking this course, 
the produce may, in times of great scarcity for other cattle food, 
be found of peculiar value, as the Rev. F. Gilbert White, of 
Lensdon Vicarage, Ashburton, experienced it to be last spring, 
the subjoined statement from whom was made public on April 
30th, 1881 :— 
"This spring, in spite of my having neglected to give the plants good 
mulching of stable litter to protect them from the frost, they again came up 
early and strong, and gave promise of a most abundant yield ; but the old 
difficulty of not knowing what to do with it again recurred. The end of the 
mangolds, which we were pulping to mix with our chaff, loomed close at 
hand ; the coming in of vetches or any other green food looked a long way off 
in the cold, dry, easterly winds. Then a new idea struck us. We l)rought 
two larc;e hand-cart loads of the luxuriant young comfrey leaves up into the 
hay-loft. "We laid them in the trough of the chaff-cutter, with about equal 
quantities of hay and of forage (/.e., of oats cut before the com is ripe 
enough to be threshed out), and we cut up all together; then we left the 
large heap to welter for two or three days upon the floor. The result is that 
we now have an abundant supply of sweet moist food, which every cow, calf, 
and horse eats with the utmost greediness, literally licking out their mangers 
lest a fragment of the leaf should escape them ; and this, with the aid of a 
little decorticated cotton-cake, will render us independent of all extraneous aid 
till summer is fnlly'come. I may observe that the cook, who knew nothing 
about the cows' change of food, at once remarked upon the improvement 
of the butter, both in colour and in texture." 
Professor Buckman has recently informed me that prickly 
comfrey was always a favourite plant of his, and remains so still, 
as he obtained three pickings from his roots last season. As a 
soiling plant, however, he expresses a great preference for lucerne, 
from which, in the same time, he obtained as many as four good 
cuttings. The Professor here touches on a point which is well 
worthy of attention. The two crops named by him can never 
come into competition, for, wherever lucerne thrives, there 
cannot be the slightest doubt of its being by far the most valu- 
able. Still there are numerous places for which this invaluable 
forage-plant would be ill-adapted, and where prickly comfrey 
would do well. 
Sir Thomas Acland sends me the following : — 
" I have found that prickly comfrey is a very valuable addition to our food 
at all times of the year. Once established it requires no trouble. It may be 
])lanted in any odd corners of the farm ; under trees, or on the sides of old 
ditches and wet places where hardly anything else will grow. Comfrey is 
j)ropagated by sets ofl' from tlie root, which is easily divided. I am told, on 
the authority of a noted stag hunter, tliat comfrey is an excellent food for 
horses." 
The bull's-eye is fairly hit in the above statement; for nothing 
can be more true than that the special value of comfrey consists 
