The Best Forage Crops

Abstract

DR. STEBLER's well-known work, “Die besten Futterpflanzen,” has found a translator into English. A French translation is also before us. so that it is now available to everyone who speaks any one of the three great languages of the civilized world. It may be de scribed as a complete account of the herbage which constitutes permanent pasturage and rotation grasses. The precise technical value of the word Futterpflanzen we do not attempt to give, although forage or fodder crop appears to be the correct English equivalent. An English agriculturist would, however, be somewhat surprised to find in a work dealing with the best forage crops no mention made of what are looked upon in this country as the best fodder crops. We are accustomed to rank such crops as vetches, rape, winter rye, trifolium, kale, and cabbage, as among the forage crops; and even swedes, mangel, carrots, and parsnips, although separately classed as root crops, would not be improperly included in the same des;gnation. By fodder crops we usually mean plants cultivated for their leafy herbage for forage, and “grass” and “hay” would come under the designation. Dr. Stebler's work deals exclusively with these last sections of the class fodder crops. We therefore consider the title of this work, as rendered into English, too ambitious, as it is scarcely a “complete account” of the best-known forage plants, but an exhaustive treatise upon some of the less-known ones, most of which are included by English farmers under the term pasture or meadow grasses.

The Best Forage Crops.

By Drs. Stebler Schröter. Translated by A. N. McAlpine, B.Sc. Lond. (London: David Nutt, 1889.)