06 BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 
reserve as an excellent fodder, liable to produce diarrhcea indeed when 
given in too large proportion, and to cause a kind of intoxication in 
sheep and swine who have been allowed free access to the plants, but 
harmless when mixed with other less succulent food, and fed out with 
care and judgment. To all appearance, the controversy teaches merely 
that special care should be exercised in using the buckwheat plant as 
fodder, particularly as regards sheep and swine. Neither the green plant 
nor the straw should be fed out except in admixture with other kinds of 
foods, and animals should never be permitted to have free access to the 
plant in the field. 
Sprengel, * who held with the earlier writers that the buckwheat plant 
must contain some peculiar substance hurtful to animals, expressed their 
views and his own in the following terms : ‘‘ Swine that have eaten freely 
of green buckwheat plants, and have then been exposed to the hot sun, 
often fall down in violent convulsions.”? . . . ‘‘ Dry buckwheat straw, 
moreover, does not agree specially well with neat cattle. It has often 
been noticed, in districts where buckwheat is largely grown, that cows 
are liable to cast their calves prematurely, after eating abundantly of this 
material. It is preferred to feed out buckwheat straw to oxen and 
young stock in early winter, since it does not agree with them later in 
the season.’’ 
According to v. Gohren, + the bad effects which have occasionally been 
observed to be produced upon animals that have eaten buckwheat are 
confined almost exclusively to sheep and swine, and to individuals that 
are either white or mottled with white. He insists that animals with 
dark-colored hair have never been known to suffer from eating buck- 
wheat. Sprengel, on the contrary, perhaps by mistake, says that the 
illness, as above cited, is specially liable to occur with animals that are 
black. 
It would be interesting to study this question carefully, and to deter- 
mine what the hurtful constituent is, if there be any, but it is to be 
noticed meanwhile that a good part, if not the whole, of the inconveni- 
ences attributed by Sprengel to the use of buckwheat straw may have 
been caused by the injudicious or too exclusive use of it. The mere 
mechanical texture of the straw would of itself indicate that cattle 
should not be forced to eat too large a proportion of it. 
In his book entitled ‘‘ Instruction in Farming and Stock-raising,”’ 
which has long been recognized in Germany as a standard work on these 
subjects, Koppe t sums up the question as follows: — 7 
‘¢ The most contradictory views are held as to the fodder value of buck- 
wheat straw. Some farmers esteem it to be equal to hay, while others 
deny that it has any value as fodder, while others still apprehend that 
* “ Prdmann’s Journal fiir tech. und ek. Chemie,” 1829, 5. 145. 
t In his “ Naturgesetze der Futterung,” Leipzig, 1872, p. 196. 
t “ Unterricht im Ackerbau und Viehzucht,” 10te Edition. Edited by Prof. 
Wolff, Berlin, 1873, p. 519. 
