144 
On Green or Fodder Crops. 
in the damp ground is the more luxuriant, although the other grows very 
■well, but the leaves are apt to become dryer on a continuance of dry weather. 
With regard to the consumption, I find that horses, cows, and pi^^s, are equally 
fond of it. The crop furnished green food from May to November for my 
horse, which only required a very little chafifed hay and straw besides, with 
half the corn usually allowed, i.e., three quarts iustead of six quarts a day. 
The cows eat it after being cut like other green food, but next season I 
intend to put it through the chaff-cutter mixed with hay and straw, and 
then add crushed oats and bran, as I think this will be a more economical 
mode of utilisation. The pigs have hitherto had the comfrey thrown to them 
on the manure-heap, and they pick out the stalks and devour them aftei' 
being trodden in. In future, I hope to put it through the chaft'-cutter for 
them as well, and give it with crushed oats. I may mention that the roots 
I originally procured from Messrs. Sutton have been sufiicient to plant out 
all my ground. At the end of the first year, I took up and divided 
several roots, from one of which I obtained between forty and fifty sets."' 
Mr. Highton's success in growing a heavy produce is plainly 
attributable to high manuring with good fat farmyard-dung in 
preparing his land for the sets, and the point cannot be too 
strongly enforced that, unless the soil be naturally rich in deep 
black mould, the extraordinary produce the roots are generally 
expected to yield can only be realized by a similar course 
being adopted, or by correspondingly large applications of arti- 
ficial manures being made. 
How far certain facts, the result of experiments made by Pro- 
fessor Buckman several years since, ought to modify this opinion 
readers may judge for themselves. He says : — 
" Having procured a few sets with roots attached, -we planted them in a 
lilot on the cold clay of the Forest Marble, previously slightly manured. 
These sets grew rapidly, and we were soon enabled to divide them, until we 
had as much as a quarter of an acre of ground occupied. The croji was 
enormous, and this too upon land of very medium quality ; but we have since 
then been trying its growth on light sandy soil, and can report that, all 
through a season of drought, the thick deep roots of the comfrey have drawii 
up the moisture which rises hygrometrically in our sand bed, and the result 
has been a succession of green leaves when surface plants were an utter 
failure." 
The plant is very much liked by Lord Moreton's farm- 
manager, Mr. Jno. Watts, of Whitfield Farm, Gloucestershire, 
who writes to me as follows : — 
" Five or six years ago, when ])rickly comfrey sets were 10/. ]x;r 1000, 
Lord Moreton bought some, and had them planted out in groimd trenched for 
the purpose. This was done about 18 inches deep and well-manured. The 
sets were planted just below the surface and about a j'ard apart. There have 
l)een immense crops cut during the season, often yielding 15 lbs. per plant, 
and if the season bo favourable, five crops a year can be j)roduced. 
" One of the chief advantagt's derived from this valuable forage plant is, 
that it is so much more forward in spring than any other green food, and 
therefore greedily relished by any kind of stock. 
"The practice here is to cut it up with straw into chaff, which, 'when 
