Gorsc as Food for Cattle. 
527 
something on the same principle, turned by a powerful water- 
wheel, and reduces the gorse to the substance of moss. This 
machine is expensive ; and few farmers have the advantage of 
water power. 
The machine which I have constructed, a sketch of which is 
here inserted, consists of two heavy millstones, working on a cut- 
stone bed, and turned by a donkey ; it is of the simplest construc- 
tion, and cost me 8/. 
The gorse, after passing through the chaffing-machine, is heaped 
on the centre of the stone bed, aiid raked under the stones by a 
man who continues walking round and rakes it off as finished. 
Gorse is indigenous to Ireland in the hilly parts ; a field allowed 
to remain untilled for five years would become covered with this 
plant ; but Irish gorse is not as good or luxuriant as the French. 
The farmers in my neighbourhood are now coming into the 
practice of shearing their gorse fences and preparing it as food for 
cattle, which has been attended with good effect. 
Impressed with the importance to agriculture in general, but 
to the small farmer in particular, of introducing a crop which 
enables him to feed eight milch cows off the same space of 
ground that supported but one by grazing, I have endeavoured to 
give publicity to my experiments, and spread the system as much 
as possible. The following fact will prove that my exertions 
were not in vain. The farmer whom 1 mentioned in the intro- 
duction, at the time his horse attracted my attention, was a very 
poor man, with difficulty supporting one cow by grazing ; having 
adopted the practice of shearing and bruising the last year's 
