j 
RYE. 
tains a less quantity of nutritious matter than 
that made from wheat, and is commonly ac- 
counted slower of digestion; yet it keeps longer, 
and is thought: by the Continental peasantry to 
contribute better to the maintenance of muscular 
strength, and is preferred by labourers in har- 
vest-work and in other severe labour. Rye grain, 
next to wheat, is certainly the most nutritive 
substance for bread ; and it constitutes the only 
bread-stuff of many a high and poor region where 
the soil and the climate are unsuited to the 
growth of wheat. It is also used extensively, 
throughout the Continent, in both the brewery 
and the distillery. 2 
- Various mixtures of rye grain and other sub- 
stances are excellent food for the rearing and 
fattening of the domestic animals. Bruised or 
coarsely ground rye, in .Belgium and Germany 
and other parts of the Continent, is mixed with 
bruised or coarsely ground barley, oats, beans, 
pease, or tares, and formed into a kind of coarse 
bread for feeding domestic animals, particularly 
horses ; and a similar compound is employed for 
fattening oxen. A mixture of rye-meal and 
skim-milk, with a small proportion of ground 
gold of pleasure, has been used, with signal suc- 
cess in Britain, in the rearing of calves. 
The value of rye herbage as early spring-food 
for ewes and lambs and milch-cows, and to be cut 
green, after it has thrown up its culm, for soiling 
horses in the stable, has been incidentally noticed, 
with sufficient fulness, in our account of the varie- 
ties. The common winter rye, however, must 
be understood as but very imperfectly adapted 
to these uses; for it tillers badly, and affords 
comparatively small bulk of forage; and in a few 
| days after it has put forth its culm, it becomes 
hard and sticky, and is rejected by the animals, 
and can no longer, without great waste, be em- 
ployed in soiling. But the St. John’s day rye, 
and Cooper’s early rye, besides being naturally 
profuse in herbage, and constitutionally slow to 
pass out of their succulent condition, have the 
high advantage—though that, perhaps, is more 
or less shared by all the other varieties—of being 
peculiarly susceptible of excitement and luxuri- 
ant increase by irrigation. 
The usefulness of the straw of the commen 
winter rye for the manufacture of straw-plait has 
already been incidentally noticed. But the long 
straw of well-grown St. John’s day rye has 
also its peculiar uses. When this straw is, as it 
may always be, of 6 or even 7 feet in length, it 
is well adapted for thatching, and for making 
reed-screens for garden use in places where marsh 
reeds are not easily te be had; and it possesses 
peculiar value for the purposes of collar-makers, 
since one length of it suffices to go entirely round 
the deepest collar, even for the largest stallion; 
and it has been currently sold for these latter 
purposes by Mr. Taunton, at what he cails “the 
comfortable price of £5 per ton.” 
One other useful quality of St. John’s day rye, 
RY EGRASS. 10 
when cultivated for soiling, is the following :— 
“Tf it has been sown on deeply ploughed and 
friable ground, when the land comes: to be 
ploughed up for turnips, it will be found that 
the stubble of each plant has attached to it a 
huge tuft of long fibres, retaining a considerable 
quantity of fine mould entangled between the 
fibres. After dragging and harrowing, if these 
be carted off, they will furnish an immense sup- 
ply of dry absorbent matter for the bases and 
liquid ingredients of manure-heaps, or for bed- 
ding the yards. Indeed, it would be, in some 
instanees, impracticable to drill turnips on land 
without removing them; so that unless the 
farmer resorts to the barbarism of burning so 
large a mass of useful vegetable matter, he is 
compelled to prepare for an economical manage- 
ment of his next dung-heap, whether he will or 
no.” 
The produce of rye per acre is estimated by 
Boussingault at 26 bushels, and by Burger and 
the author of British Husbandry at 25 bushels. 
The average proportion of grain to straw is 
stated by Boussingault to be as 45 to 100, and by 
Burger and Schwertz to be as 413 to 100. Ac- 
cording to Boussingault, one part of rye grain, 
when dried at 230° Fahrenheit, was reduced to 
0°834, and, when incinerated, left 0:0237 of ash ; 
one part of rye straw, when completely dried, 
was reduced to 0°813, and, when incinerated, left 
0:0368 of ash; the grain consists of 4635 per 
cent. of carbon, 5°38 of hydrogen, 44:21 of oxy- 
gen, 1°69 of nitrogen, and 2°37 of incombustible 
matter, and the straw consists of 49°88 per cent. 
of carbon, 5°58 of hydrogen, 40°56 of oxygen, 03 
of nitrogen, and 3°68 of incombustible matter.— 
Loudon’s Hortus Britannicus.— Lawson's Agri- 
culturalist’s Manual—Baxter's Agricultural Ln- 
brary.— Goodrich Smith’s Economy of Farming.— 
Parmentier’s Traité Sur La Culture Des Grains. 
—The Museum Rusticum.—Boussingault’s Rural 
Economy.—Low’s Elements of Agriculture—Hun- 
ter’s Georgical Exsays.—Radclifi’s Agriculture of 
Flanders.—Reports to the Board of Agriculiure.— 
Miller’s Gardener's Dictionary. — Von Thaer’s 
Principes Raisonnés d’Agriculture.— The Quar- 
terly Journal of Agriculture—Papers by Messrs. 
Taunton, Pusey, and Baker in the Journal of the 
R. Agricultural Society. 
RYEGRASS. The agricultural species and 
varieties of the gramineous genus Loliwm. A 
statement of their generic characters is given in 
the article Lorium; and ample notices of their 
economical value and uses, and of the methods 
of cultivating them for all ordinary purposes, 
are contained in the articles GrassEs, CLOVER, 
Hay, Arrer-crass, and Rotation or Crops; so 
that, in the present article, we need only to de- 
scribe them, and to state how they may best be 
cultivated for the raising of seeds. 
The common ryegrass, Lolewm perenne, grows 
wild in the grass lands of Britain, and has 
been more extensively cultivated by British 
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