On Green or Fodder Crops. 
145 
roots become scarce and straw dry and husky,' enables us to keep the store 
stock in the yards a week or two longer, to give the grass a good start. 
" At other periods, through the summer, it is used for ' weaning calves,' 
pigs, horses, or any other kind of stock that may happen to be about the 
' homestead.' 
" There is no doubt that persons in business, who keep a cow or two, or a 
horse, would find the prickly comfrey a most useful article of fodder, and like 
«very other kind of agricultural commodity, the better it is treated the more 
satisfactory will be the result. 
"The cultivation of it is of a very simple character, an ordinary hoeing 
once or twice in the season to keep down the weeds, and a coat of dung in the 
autumn, forked or dug in, are all that is necessary, so far as my experience 
goes." 
Dr. Voelcker gave an analysis of prickly comfrey, vol. vii. 
Second Series of the ' Journal,' adding thereto the statement : — 
" In comparison with other similar food I may say that comfrey 
has about the same feeding-value as green mustard or man- 
gold or turnip-tops, or Italian rye-grass grown on irrigated land." 
Prickly comfrey is probably grown in Ireland to a far greater 
extent than in England. Popular opinion appears, however, to 
be as divided there as here respecting the advantages to be de- 
rived by growing the plant. Not long since, the subjoined letter 
appeared in an Irish newspaper : — 
" I see several of your correspondents write j'ou about planting prickly 
comfrey. My advice to them is, under uo circumstances to allow it into their 
land, otherwise they will never be able to get rid of it. I got my farm about six 
years since, and in one of my fields there was a good deal of prickly comfrey. 
None of my beasts or sheep will eat it; and I have grubbed, and harrowed, 
and picked, subsoiled, harrowed, and grubbed, and still I cannot get quit of 
this horrid weed. I have employed men and women going over the field with 
iron prongs, I5 feet long, raising it out by the roots, and, notwithstanding, I 
cannot eradicate it. 1 know a gentleman in the north of Ireland who planted 
it some years since ; now he wants to get rid of it, but finds it impossible to 
do so. Can you, or any of your corresjaondents, tell me how to kill it ? " 
In reply to the above, Mr. E. Smyth, Knock's House, Clona- 
kilty, wrote that he was acquainted with a great many stock- 
owners who are delighted with prickly comfrey, and adding : 
" I have been using it now for some time, and can certify that my horses 
and cattle are very fond of it. Some refused it at first, but all take it now 
greedily, and I am planting a lot more of it. I am now using the fifth cutting 
for the year." 
The plant has attracted attention even in South Australia. A 
correspondent to the ' Darling Downs Gazette ' says : 
" I planted some roots of prickly comfrey in Jaouary last, four feet apart. 
They grew a dense mass of leaves, and ultimately covered the intervening 
space. Three weeks ago we had a hailstorm that riddled all the leaves. I 
cut them, and gave a quantity to an old cow that was used to hand-feeding — 
they were new to her. She left several times, but always came back again, 
and ultimately she ate the whole. I gave the rest of the leaves to a lot of 
VOL. xvm. — S. S. L 
