yet as the season advances and other herbage more palatable is to be met
with, it is left with its beautiful blue flowers and broad foliage to
rob the soil and adorn our fields, to the regret of the farmer. It grows
wild in great abundance in Battersea fields, where my late friend Mr.
Curtis used ludicrously to say that bad husbandry was exhibited to
perfection. This plant is there continually seen in the greatest
abundance, where the ground has not been lately disturbed, even under
the noses of all the half-starved cattle of that neighbourhood that are
turned in during the autumn.

The root dried and ground to a powder will improve Coffee, and is
frequently drunk therewith, especially in Germany, where it is prepared
in cakes and sold for that purpose.



43. HEDYSARUM Onobrychis. SAINT-FOIN.--This is certainly one of the most
useful plants of this tribe, and in the south of England is the life and
support of the upland farmer: in such places it is the principal fodder,
both green and in hay, for all his stock. I have not observed it to be
cultivated in Worcestershire or Herefordshire, where there appears to be
much land that would grow it, and which is under much inferior crops.
The seed sown is about four bushels per acre. A mistake is often made in
mentioning this plant. The newspapers, in quoting prices from Mark Lane,
call it Cinquefoil, a very different plant, (Potentilla) of rather a
noxious quality. See Gleanings on Works of Agriculture and Gardening, p.
88, where a curious blunder occurs of this kind.