52 
Further Account of the Tussac Grass. 
management, in my opinion, the same quantity would be found 
to maintain three times that number throughout the year. 
The grass rises high above the snow, is fresh and green all the 
winter, and from its height completely shelters the horses and 
cattle lying among it. 
Perhaps the best experiment which could be made in England 
would be to plant tussac on one of the small islands of the 
Orkneys, such as Hunda, if it met with the approbation of the 
owner : and I conceive it would be greatly to the advantage of 
the landed proprietors of the Orkney and Shetland Islands to 
send from among them an intelligent person to the Falkland 
Islands, to study the habits of the grass and to collect seed; he 
should arrive here early in October. 
I am sanguine enough to hope that the introduction of tussac 
into those islands would replace the loss of revenue to proprietors 
from the depressed value of the kelp : and I hope your Lordship 
will be inclined to consider this a subject of sufficient interest to 
the residents in that part of Great Britain and the west coasts of 
Scotland and Ireland, to cause my remarks to be forwarded for 
their consideration. I have. Sec. 
(Signed) R. C. Moody, Gov, 
Government House, Port Louis, 
Falkland Islands, Jan. 17, 1844. 
IV. — An Essay on the Comparative Advantages in the Employment 
of Horses and Oxen in Farm Work. By James Cowie, of the 
Mains of Haulkerton, Laurencekirk, N.B. 
Prize Essay. 
This is a subject which has excited some controversy among agri- 
culturists. Lord Kaines wrote elaborately on it, and was at great 
pains in showing the superior advantages of employing oxen. His 
oliservations and calculations are not suited in many respects to 
the advanced state of husbandry in our day, however valuable they 
may have been three-quarters of a century ago. 
The writer of the following essay is situated in a district of Scot- 
land where oxen are not much used in farm work ; but he has for 
several years past been in the practice of employing them himself ; 
and in the hope that his observaticms may not be unacceptable to 
his southern brethren, he has presumed to send them across the 
Border. 
Previously to the discovery of shoeing in the ninth century, 
horses' feet having no protection against the stones and hard ground. 
