fifth and one-sixth consisted of woody or unassi- 
milable matter, and the rest was water. The 
cultivation of the chief varieties of the common 
tare will be discussed after we have disposed of 
the other species. . 
The tufted vetch, Vicra cracca, is a somewhat 
abundant native of hedge-banks, plantation-sides, 
thickets, osier grounds, and low bushy meadows 
in many parts of Britain. Its roots are peren- 
nial, small, and creeping; its stems are furrow- 
ed, downy, climbing, and from 2 to 5 feet high, 
and choke up other plants with their long many- 
branched tendrils; its leaflets are numerous, 
elliptico-lanceolate, downy or silky on both sur- 
faces, and of a hoary light bluish green colour; 
its stipules are half arrow-shaped and mostly 
entire; its flowers are numerous, and grow in 
dense clusters, or closely imbricated, elongated, 
one-sided racemes, and have a bluish or purplish 
colour beautifully variegated with tints of bright 
bluish violet, and bloom from June till August ; 
its peduncles or floral footstalks are longer than 
the leaves; and its pods are smooth and scarcely 
an inch long, and contain each 4 or 5 dark glo- 
bular seeds about the size of those of the lentil. 
This vetch is a good forage plant, and can be 
profitably cultivated for both its herbage and its 
seeds; but has not come into much favour among 
British farmers, probably on account of its per- 
tinaciously climbing habit, and of the difficulty 
of gathering it. Dr. Anderson speaks highly of it ; 
and Dr. Plot praises it and the wood vetch as the 
most suitable of all known plants for starved or 
weak cattle. It yields a considerable bulk of 
fodder, and is greedily eaten by cattle, and has 
the important recommendation of containing a 
much smaller proportion of water than the com- 
mon tare. Forty-three grains of its nutritive 
matter comprise 20 of sugar, 12 of mucilage, and 
11 of insoluble and saline principles. This vetch 
thrives best on soils of medium character be- 
tween stiff and loose, or between clayey and 
sandy; yet it succeeds well on such light sandy 
soils as afford sufficient anchorage for its long 
foraging roots, and on such strong clay soils 
as are well drained and do not allow a stagnation 
of moisture about the roots in the months of 
winter and spring. A specimen of it grown on 
360 square yards of the Meadowbank Nursery in 
the vicinity of Edinburgh began to bloom and 
had an average height of 23 feet on the 12th 
of June, and was ripe and had an average height 
of from 4 to 5 feet on the second week of August, 
and was cut at the latter date and thrashed on 
the 16th of September, and yielded 30lbs. of clean 
seed, 24 stones of dried haulm, and 2 stones of 
chaffy refuse separated in the process of thrash- 
ing and cleaning. Two very distinct varieties of 
the tufted vetch occur as ornamental plants in 
flower gardens,—the one, V. ¢. floribus albis, with 
white flowers,—and the other, V.c. floribus ru- 
bris, with red flowers; and an important and 
very distinct agricultural variety of it is men- 
VETCH. 
tioned by Mr. Lawson as having been obtained 
from France, and as possessing broader and 
smoother dark green foliage than the normal 
plant, and yielding a greater quantity of seed, 
and being about a week later in blooming. 
The wood vetch, Viera sylvatica, grows wild in 
stony places among trees and bushes, on the 
stony borders of woods and sides of hedges, on 
the rocky parts of shores and beaches, and even 
sometimes on strong damp poor clayey soils, in 
many districts of Britain. It is one of the most 
elegant of our indigenous plants, and serves well 
to decorate certain parts of shrubberies, or to 
train over fences and large trellises. It has simi- 
lar habits to the tufted vetch, but is more impa- 
tient of exposure, and thrives best when sup- 
ported by shrubs and bushy young trees. Its 
root is perennial and very slightly creeping; its 
stems are numerous, much branched, widely 
spreading, and commonly from 4 to 7 feet high ; 
its tendrils also are large and branched, and 
combine with the ramose character of the stems 
to carry the plant over a great extent of sup- 
porting surface ; its leaflets are elliptical, smooth, 
and of a light green colour; its stipules are small, 
sublunate, and bristle-pointed; its flowers have 
the same kind of arrangement as those of the 
tufted vetch, and display beautiful variegations | 
of white and blue streaked with grey, and bloom 
in July and August; and its pods are similar in — 
size to those of the tufted vetch, and have a bright 
brown colour, minutely dotted. In its natural 
habitats, particularly in moist woods, it produces | 
a bulk of herbage six times greater than either 
the tufted vetch or the bush vetch; but when | 
transplanted to any open situation, it produces | 
comparatively little; and, though capable of | 
being advantageously raised from seeds on poor | 
and waste spots where few other forage plants 
will thrive, and of there producing an amount of | 
herbage somewhat in keeping with its wild luxu- | 
riance in moist woods, yet it ripens its pods so 
irregularly, and drops them as they become ripe | 
so freely, that a good supply of its seeds cannot || 
easily be obtained, and requires to be secured by 
the slow process of gathering the pods by hand 
as they arrive one after another at maturity. 
This plant is superior to many of the commonly 
cultivated vetches in nutritiveness, and is eaten 
more readily than any of them by horses, cattle, 
sheep, and alpacas. A variety of it has white 
flowers. 
The bush or hedge vetch, Vicza sepium, grows 
wild about hedges and in woody places in many 
parts of Britain; but though naturally loving 
shady spots, on superior and rather dry soils, in 
situations favourable to its climbing on bushes 
and dwarf trees, it thrives well in cultivated 
fields, and adapts itself to a somewhat wide range 
of soils, and is by no means so dependent on 
other plants for support as the tufted and the 
wood vetches. Its root is perennial and slightly 
creeping ; its stems attain an average height of 
