3S2 
Gorse. 
The cultivation of this plant upon the thinner and the poorer 
soils will enable the farmer, supposing him to be so inclined, to 
improve those parts of his farm in which the soil is of a deeper 
and a better quality, and to raise heavy crops upon them. Tlie 
green provender which the cultivated gorse would secure to him, 
from localities that would otherwise have yielded him scarcely 
anything, would allow him more time and freer scope to bring 
the rest of his land into profitable tilth. 
Perhaps nothing had a more direct tendency to check the ad- 
vance of good husbandry than the failures which farmers so fre- 
quently, nay, indeed which they generally experience, when 
attempting to cultivate the artificial grasses. In nine cases out of 
ten these failures may be traced to two causes : one of these 
causes is, that in the tillage sufficient care is not taken to clear 
the land of the roots of couch-grass and other indigenous weeds. 
When these roots are left in the ground the application of manure 
stimulates them into such luxuriance as to overpower, and ulti- 
mately to destroy, all the artificial grasses. These grasses are 
always more delicate feeders than the couch and other perennial 
indigenous grasses. The other cause of the failures which farmers 
so often experience with the artificial grasses, after having be- 
stowed the greatest care on cleaning the land, is in a great mea- 
sure attributable to the seeds of couch-grass and of other jierennial 
weeds, which are conveyed to the land in the dung used to ma- 
nure it. The vegetative powers of such seeds is not at all im- 
paired by their passing through the stomach and bowels of the 
animals fed with the grasses that produced them. The farmer, 
every time he manures his land, conveys into it in the dung a full 
supply of the seed of the very weeds, upon the removal of which, 
as roots, he had bestowed so much trouble and expense. 
Independently, therefore, of the extra quantity of provender 
which such land would produce under gorse, the absence of the 
seed of couch grass, &c., from the dung of the stock fed with 
gorse, is a matter of importance to the farmer ; and deserves the 
consideration of every agriculturist who intends to bring his land 
into proper tillage, and to manage it with advantage. ^ 
By thoroughly clearing off land the roots of weeds, and by keep- 
ing it free from their seed, the cereal and artificial grasses have all 
the benefit of whatever manures may be intended for them. To 
carry good manure into foul and dirty land, or foul manure into 
that which has been well cleaned, is to expend capital and labour 
in encouraging weeds to vegetate with luxuriance, and endlessly 
to perpetuate their species. 
In stating that gorse will grow luxuriantly upon the thinnest, 
the coldest, and apparently tlie most sterile soils, it is not meant 
to convey the idea that it will not grow more luxuriantly, and 
