BULLETIN OF THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION. 171 
butter is insipid or unsavory, and is not of handsome yellow color. 
Even at the end of June, it is white like “straw butter.” Cattle may 
even die on such pastures when they have not been accustomed to them 
from their youth, or when they have been driven from upland pastures 
to the low meadows. But horses, and some animals other than neat- 
cattle, take no hurt when thus transferred. One method of checking 
the plant (Zquisetum arvense) from spreading is to pasture the land 
during several years with horses and sheep. In Hanover, the rent of 
cow-pastures is lessened about one-half, or more, by the presence of 
equisetum plants; and the price of hay is diminished by them in the 
same way. 
It is to be observed that the value of Beckmann’s testimony as to 
the actual hurtfulness of the equisetum plant is a good deal impaired by 
his further statement to the effect “that even cabbages and beets, or 
other roots that have been grown upon equisetum land, are not nearly 
so nourishing or so good for milch-cows as those which have been 
grown upon clean land, as is well known to all dwellers in the Hano- 
verian marshes. ‘The milk obtained from such fodder is almost as 
blue and thin, and the butter as pale and unsavory, as if the cows had 
been eating grass or hay that was mixed with equisetum plants.” The 
inference to be drawn from this statement is, that the animals fed with 
the watery bog-plants were insufficiently nourished. It is probable 
that there was considerably less dry matter in a given volume of the 
vegetables in question than in those grown upon dry land; and not 
unlikely that the cattle got for their rations one and the same bulk of 
the fodder, no matter where it was grown. 
There is a good deal of testimony upon record to the effect that 
Equisetum arvense may be eaten by horses and sheep, not only with im- 
punity, but with advantage. ‘Thus, Braun * has stated that hay, which 
contains so much equisetum that it would be very injurious to horned 
cattle is not only harmless as regards horses, but is excellent fodder 
for them. A Hanoverian farmer, who was noted for his knowledge 
of horses and his skill in rearing them, esteemed hay that was charged 
with equisetum plants to be excellent fodder for these animals. He 
was accustomed to buy such hay in preference to the usual kind. 
Switzer f reports that the plant is sometimes eaten by horses in prefer- 
_ * Beckmann’s “ Beytriige zur Gkonomie,” u. s. w., 1783, 9., pp. 880, 382. 
+ Beckmann’s “ Beytriige,” 9., pp. 359, 361. 
