grain is also utilized. It does not ripen regularly except in southern France, where it is sown broadcast in April or May and harvested in August or September. It often gives 60,000 to 100,000 kilos gross weight per hectare. White or Douro sorghum is of larger and more nutritious grain than the other varieties, and is much used by the Arabs in Algeria and Tunis for the preparation of couscous, a sort of alimentary paste, somewhat like semoule, and one of the features of the Algerian exhibit. MILLET (Panicum) is grown in central and southern France, the best white grain coming from St. Étienne. Its grain is principally used for poultry, singing birds, etc., while the whole plant is used for green forage. It is sown from April to June and must be cut before graining if for forage. MOHA (Germanicum) is a species of millet, the Hungarian variety of which, originally introduced into France in 1815, is commonly used for forage. A more vigorous variety, from California, with larger leaves and more succulent stalks, is of later introduction, and when used as a green fodder is said to be more nourishing than maize. Poultry, especially young turkeys, eat its grain with avidity. This plant withstands heat and drought, is easily affected by cold, and, therefore, is planted late. When it is to be used as a dry fodder moha may be dried like hay. If the weather is not too dry after its mowing this plant will grow, like grass, from the root, and thus affords an excellent pasturage for sheep. BUCKWHEAT, Sarrasin (Polygonum fagopyrum), is quite common in France, and fine specimens were shown on the Quai d'Orsay. It is principally cultivated in Brittany, but also in Normandy and the Sologne district, and is used in many ways. The Bretons are very fond of it as a meal and make buckwheat cakes much more commonly than we do. Its grain is also given to poultry, pigeons, etc., and is esteemed for fattening swine, and is excellent for horses, but is said, somewhat doubtfully, to cause vertigo among horned cattle and sheep. It is a good green fodder, especially in mixtures, as with oats, millet, moha, or vetch. The ash of the stalk contains a large proportion of potash, and the plant itself is much used as a green fertilizer. Finally, its blossoms, as with us, furnish valuable bee forage. It is often sown as a second crop, after winter oats reaped in July. The old variety of black angular grain is now being superseded by a better one of a silvery gray color. There is also a Tartarian variety, stronger and less sensitive to cold, but ripening irregularly. When this variety is cultivated in Normandy its quality is much improved and somewhat resembles rye. RICE is only cultivated in France in a few southern localities, as the marshes of the Camargue, or at certain points in Algeria, and does not succeed particularly well. None grown in France was shown at the Exposition. CANARY SEED, Alpiste (Phalaris canariensis), of which there were several good exhibits, is considerably cultivated in France, not only for its seed, but as green forage for horses and cattle. It is sown from April to July, and cut three or four months later. FORAGE PLANTS.-Besides the cereals, many specimens of hay, both from the ordinary grasses and from clover, lucern, and sainfoin, were exhibited, though no important addition to the list of French forage plants seems to have been made since 1878. CLOVER.-Several varieties are cultivated in France, the most important being the violet and incarnate clovers. The former is more appreciated as a green forage than as hay, while the latter is more cultivated upon milk farms than upon larger farms where forage beets are grown. These two clovers are considered as the best plants for sideration or green manure, the use of which has been extending in France of late years. The principle of this process consists, as is well known, in supplying nitrogen to the soil by the burying of green crops which are known to have the property of assimilating atmospheric nitrogen to a large degree. It is necessary that these clovers should be buried at the moment when they contain most nitrogen, which is as soon as they are in full flower. It is also necessary that their complete decomposition shall have taken place in the soil before they are fit to nourish the crop, generally wheat, for the benefit of which they have been buried. M. le Vicomte d'Avène has given much attention to sideration upon his farm in the department of Seine-et-Marne, and has met with considerable success. Land of not particularly good quality being siderated with violet clover in 1887 gave 34 hectoliters of wheat to the hectare in 1888, while incarnate clover gave similar results. In one experiment where the clover had not fully decomposed in the ground there was a failure, and the wheat grains decayed without sprouting. If the first crop of clover must be mown and used for live stock, the second crop may be used for sideration upon condition of making up the deficit of nitrogen by the addition of about 100 kilos of nitrate of soda per hectare during the following spring. LUCERN. Although fields of it last nowadays only 3 years or so, lucern is still considered as an essentially ameliorating plant. It is worth more as an accumulator of nitrogen in the soil than as a product for sale or for consumption. LUPULINE, or Minette, is used upon farms where many sheep are raised, and there takes the place of incarnate clover for cows. SAINFOIN often furnishes a first crop as abundant as lucern, and the second crop, cut while in grain, is an important one. It is almost as valuable as incarnate clover, and does not cause flatulency in cattle, but is less valuable for plowing under than ordinary clover, and much less so than lucern. In an exhibit coming from Ste. Menehould (Marne), honey was shown from bees allowed to feed upon Sainfoin. TEOSINTE (Euchlena luxurians, Reana luxuriana), which was introduced into the United States a few years since, is well known in Algeria and in the French colonies, where it gives excellent results as a forage plant. It grows luxuriantly in southern France but never flowers there. FIG. 11.-Orobanche minor. (From Journal d'Agriculture Pratique.) A single seed of teosinte will, in a few months, produce a tuft 1 meter in diameter and 2 or 3 meters in height of stalk, the product of which will weigh 100 kilos when green. It should be employed as a green forage or for ensilage, as its thick, fleshy stalks will not allow of its being converted into hay. A single kilo of the seed is sufficient to sow a whole hectare. Unfortunately no sample of this plant was to be seen at the Exposition. At the Agricultural Congress some notice was taken of one of two parasitic plants infesting lucern and similar crops, which it might be well to mention here. An important parasite is the broom-rape or strangle-weed (Orobanche minor, Fig. 11), which develops upon many plants, especially upon the roots of clover, ordinarily in the second year of its growth; the plant grows yellow and dies, generally in patches of greater or less extent. This parasite multiplies by very fine seeds, of which prodigious quantities are produced by each plant, and which are easily carried by the wind, but are easily separated from clover seed by appropriate machines. The best way to exterminate this parasite is to omit the planting of clover for a longer or shorter period, replacing it by lucern, which is not so easily attacked. The same parasite attacks the carrot, while a larger variety attacks hemp and tobacco. The cuscuta or dodder-a leafless, rootless, filiform, phanerogamic parasite-attacks clover and lucern, in France as it does with us, spreading rapidly and causing serious damage. The best protection French farmers find against it is to insure the purity of the lucern or clover seed used, or to destroy, by cutting and burning, any patch appearing to be attacked. Sprinkling with a 5 per cent solution of sulphate of iron is also to be recommended. The creation of a station for the trial of seeds at the Agronomic Institute now permits the purity of seeds to be controlled in France as it has been for many years in Switzerland and Denmark. Yields per hectare of certain cereals, etc,, in various departments of France, in 1888 and 1889, as shown at the Exposition. |