nd digestible fibre 3.96 36.68
Indigestible woody fibre (cellulose) 3.29 30.48
Insoluble mineral matters .19 1.75
------ ------
100.00 100.00
[* Containing nitrogen .22 2.03]
[+ Containing nitrogen .16 1.48]

_Rib grass plantain_ (_Plantago lanceolata_) is one of those plants, the
value of which for forage purposes is questionable. Many persons believe
it to be a useful food. Its composition, which looks favorable, is as
follows:--

Water 84.78
Albuminous matters 2.18
Fatty matters 0.56
Starch, gum, &c. 6.08
Woody fibre 5.10
Mineral matter 1.30

The grasses, natural and artificial, are occasionally affected by a
formidable and well-known fungus, the _ergot_. Italian rye-grass is the
most liable to the ravages of this pest, and there are on record several
cases in which ergotted rye-grass proved fatal to the animal fed upon
it. Clover and the various leguminous plants appear more liable to the
ergot disease than the natural grasses (except rye-grass), but I have
on several occasions noticed this fungus on the spikelets of _Hordeum
pratense_, _Festuca pratense_, and _Bromus erectus_. It has also been
noticed that rye-grass rapidly developed under the influence of liquid
manure is so rank that young animals fed upon it are poisonously
affected. Alderman Mechi states that in July, 1864, ten out of his
thirty Shorthorn calves died in consequence of eating the heads of
Italian rye-grass, and that the survivors' health was seriously injured.
He was also unfortunate with his lambs, which, during the same month,
were folded on Italian rye-grass. "Four days ago," writes the Alderman,
"it was sewaged, having been prior to the former growth also guanoed.
In four days it had grown from four to five inches, was of an intense
green, and pronounced to be, by sharp practical men, just the food for
lambs. Well, we put on our lambs, taking care to do so in the evenings
after they had been well fed. My bailiff accompanied them, and, within
five minutes, turning accidentally round, he saw two of the lambs with
their heads in the air staggering (stomach sta