Le Journal d'Agriculture Pratique of the 23rd November, 1893, gives the composition of rations of leaves of prickly-pear and of the arbutus-tree which M. Lang, Director of Domains in Corsica, has arranged for his cheptel (a technical term used in France to denote cattle leased out on the halvessystem).

In the neighbourhood of Tunis even, one can see plantations which have been made by the dairymen for the purpose of feeding their cows upon the leaves.

In all these instances it is the fleshy leaves alone which have been used. This forms a very poor food-stuff, containing at least 95 per cent. of its weight of water. The fruits are rejected. The fruits spring from the leaves of the preceding year. If these be stripped for the purpose of being given to animals the harvest of leaves is checked.

Are we not going on wrong lines in this matter? Would it not be more advantageous to use the fruit? Here is the question in regard to which it appears to me to be desirable that particular inquiry should be made, in the midst of this broad forage-plant inquiry in which we are engaged.

Let us observe, to commence with, what we know about the Barbary fig (prickly-pear).

According to a report by M. Briet, Vice-Consul of France at Almeria (Bulletin du Ministère d'Agriculture, December, 1887), Spanish manufac turers who distil the prickly-pear have obtained 34,000 kilos per hectare (s hectare is 2 acres 1 rood 35 perches). We are far behind this result in Tunis.

M. Saurin, a settler at Tebeltech, has tried to calculate the product of s hectare by taking the mean weight of the fruits of 1 square foot, and multiplying it by the proper number of feet. He obtains a result of about 20,000 kilos. We have arrived at a similar result by a much more precise method.

At my request M. Bertainchand, Director of the Laboratory of Agricultural Chemistry, has noted the yield of fruits in a prickly-pear plantation, situated in the Domain of Bir-Kassa. This plantation is 1 hectare 37 ares in extent. The land is covered with stones from ruins, and is unsuitable for any other crop. Each year, for seven years, the crop of fruits of this field has been sold for 300 francs to an Arab merchant who retails them. This fixity of the annual price indicates a regular crop. There is, of course, some variation in the product of one year and another; but the crop never fails.

This year the purchaser has taken from the field 450 donkey-loads of the fruits, which he has sold again at 1 fr. 20 c. the load, or 540 francs for the lot. A donkey load weighs about 58 kilos; the 450 loads therefore represent a total weight of 26,100 kilos of fruit of prickly-pear for 1 hectare 27 ares, or 19,024 kilos per hectare. The harvest was a medium one; there are often better.

We thus have a fundamental fact perfectly settled as far as Tunis is concerned a hectare of a certain kind of prickly-pear gives a crop of about 20,000 kilos of fruits.

What is the nutritive value of these fruits? To see the Arabs content with them for part of the year, we cannot doubt that it is sufficiently great. M. de Gasparin, the celebrated agriculturist, wrote on his return from s voyage to Sicily

:

"Prickly-pear is the manna, the providence of Sicily. Those who have not seen the abundance of its production, and the almost universal use which the inhabitants make of it from July to November, would consider

these epithets exaggerated; but when one knows all that the island owes to the plant, one can only praise it. We may begin by saying that the peasants are fed entirely on these fruits from the moment at which they come to maturity, for as long as they remain on the plant; they consume twentyfive or thirty of them each day. Sicily fattens during these four months; when this is past, fasting begins."

At the outset, it seems not unreasonable to conclude that what will nourish man will also nourish beasts. The particulars contained in Wolff's tables confirm this opinion. The fruits have the following composition:

Upon these data, Wolff assigns to the fruit the number 304 as the " comparative nutritive number," that is to say, to equal 100 kilos of good dry hay, taken as a forage-type, we require 304 kilos of the fruits of the prickly-pear. The figures given by Wolff for the following roots, fleshy fruits, &c., are as follows:

The fruits of the prickly-pear, therefore, hold high rank in this scale, coming a little after potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes, far before carrots and beetroot, and much before radishes and pumpkins.

Here we have a second fact settled-it is that, without assuming too high a standard of precision for these "equivalents," the variety of prickly-pear fruit, analysed by Wolff, constitutes an excellent green fodder. We know by experience that such fruits are eaten with avidity by cattle and pigs.

The prickly-pear plantations of Tunis all belong to the spinous sorts. The spines, which exist in such profusion on the plants, produce such irritation and inflammation that the harvesting of fruits involves actual torture. No one could brave this for a period without endangering his health. The repugnance of colonists to a plant so difficult to manage would be insurmountable if this were irremediable.

But there is a third fact learnt;-there exist in Tunis, more or less widely diffused, several varieties without spines, which at first sight, are as easy to deal with as ordinary fruit-trees.

To summarise, a yield of 20,000 kilos of fruits per hectare, a nutritive value of fruits equal to 304, and absence of spines; these three characters exist in varieties of cactus (Opuntia). If they were united in one species, Africa would at length possess the forage-plant she requires, and under most advantageous conditions.

In reality we have, First advantage, The trifling expense of a plantation so readily established, and after the fourth year no expense save that of harvest.

Prickly-pear dreads humidity and very clayey soils. The natives make their plantations by preference in arid country on the highest slopes of hills. On the soil which they do not give themselves the trouble to clear, they

trace furrows about 2 metres apart; in these furrows, of 40 centimetres by 40 centimetres, they make a hole, throw a little manure in the hole, place the fragment of prickly-pear to be planted on the manure, and replace the earth round the cutting. A plough makes the necessary furrows in a hectare of land in half a day, and eight men plant a hectare in a day. The cost is about 15 francs, together with about 5,000 kilos of manure per heetare. It is the practice, during the following years, to clear the spaces between the rows. After a certain time the prickly-pear smothers all the other vegetation, and no other attention is bestowed upon it.

The Maltese and Italians who cultivate the prickly-pear to give the leaves to their cows plant the lines wider apart from 4 to 5 metres, and plant other crops between the rows during the first few years. In Sicily, according to evidence furnished by M. Saurin, the prickly-pear is often planted in lines very wide apart.

Manure is considered indispensable. They never fail to use it in planting. From some experiments made in Spain, some manured plants grew twice as quickly as others which were not manured.

The cuttings consist of one mother-leaf and two leaf-sprouts springing from it. One leaf might suffice, but the striking is less certain. It is the mother-leaf detached from the plant which will eventually form the root. The cuttings are left exposed to the sun for a period varying from fifteen days to a month before planting them. M. Heuzé, in his "Plantes fourragères," says five or six days only; but the Arabs consulted insisted on the necessity for this delay of fifteen days to a month. The cutting must have lost the greater portion of the water it contains, and be withered before its rooting is assured.

Thus, the expenses of planting and maintenance are as follows:

Making the furrows, half a day, with an Arab plough
Making the holes and planting, eight days for a labourer
5,000 kilos of manure

franes

2

12

50

...

Ten days' work in the ploughing over again during each of two
years following the original planting

If non-prickly species are planted, it will be necessary to add to this the cost of a defensive hedge. The jujube-tree makes the best enclosure. The price of this hedge will, of course, depend upon the facility with which we can obtain the jujube-tree.

We must also add the cost of the original cuttings. Usually they are considered as valueless, as it is the practice of proprietors never to refuse permission for them to be taken from their hedges or plantations.

Second advantage.-The regularity of the harvest during a period which passes the mean of human life.

I am assured that some prickly-pear plantations which are always vigorous and productive are 50 years old. They have the inconvenience of all bushy crops. They require a rather long period before entering into full bearing. The prickly-pear begins to be productive in the third year. It is not in full bearing till the fifth. From the fifth year we possess, therefore, a forage plant which gives, without much variation, a regular crop for at least forty years.

Third advantage. The season when this crop comes on is just the period of short-commons for African stock.

The fruits are produced from July to November, that is, say, during the hottest months, when stock are reduced to eating stubble and dry herbs, which each day become scarcer, and where there is exceeding paucity of green forage-plants on non-irrigated farms.

Last advantage.-The high yield, exceptional for Africa. The grass.mowed after a cereal crop (the natural pastures of Africa), give 2,500 to 3,000 kilos of hay per hectare; vetches give 3,000-4,500 kilos. Sainfoin gives 5-7,000 kilos, according to Millot, and up to 11,400, according to M. Knill. (It is true that no one, except M. Knill, has regularly cultivated sainfoin in N. Africa.) Oats, cut green and dried, according to M. Saurin, 6,000, and often up to 11,000 kilos, but under exceptional conditions.

As to forage-roots, they do not yet regularly enter into African agricultural practice.

We can see that we must place in the first class, as a forage plant, a prickly-pear, giving, 20,000 kilos to the acre, equivalent to 6,500 kilos of dry hay.

From figures collected by M. Issartel, Director of the abattoir of Tunis, it would appear that the live weights of Tunisian cattle are as follows:

We are therefore certain of being above the truth in estimating at 300 kilos the mean live weight of cattle in a herd. The normal daily ration of one of our cattle of 300 kilos is about 10 kilos of dry hay. A grower who could give during the summer a half-ration of prickly-pear fruits to his stock, say 15 kilos 200 gr., equal to 5 kilos of hay, and which would only leave to them the necessity of collecting during the day, on their stubblefields and pasturages, the other half-ration of forage, more or less dry, would not be compelled to see them, as the month of November came round, worn out with hunger and succumbing to diarrhoea, caused by the young herbage. It would keep his herd in good condition.

Well, 20,000 kilos prickly-pears of the variety analysed by Wolff would form 1,315 half-rations of 15 kilos 200 gr. Spread over a period of four months, these 1,315 half-rations would suffice for the keep of ten beasts.

Hence the practical conclusion that every agricultural improvement which would support his large stock on a prickly-pear plantation at the rate of a hectare to ten cattle, would in reality protect them from the effects of our summer droughts, and from the fodder famines which recur in Africa every four or five years.

But the yield of 20,000 kilos to the hectare, the nutritive value of fruits equal to 304, and the absence of spines, are these three characters actually found united in one species?

I have questioned many natives to ascertain why they do not cultivate the spineless sort. Their answers are always the same. "Are they less productive? No. Are the fruits inferior? No. Then why don't you plant some of them? Because the stock would eat up the plantations." Rather than fence in the non-prickly species to protect them, the natives prefer to plant the prickly kinds, which take care of themselves.

However, Frenchmen from whom I have gathered data tell me that the product of non-prickly prickly-pear is less. Is it a stock phrase that is repeated, or a reality?

M. Bertainchand has analysed the fruits of the prickly-pear collected by himself. He has obtained the following results:

If this analysis shows a certain proportion of protein in excess, it, on the other hand, exhibits, as compared with Wolff's analysis, a decrease in the fatty bodies, the sugar and the dry substance-a decrease which sensibly impairs the nutritive value of the fruit.

Even with these lower results, if it be admitted that the mean price of a quintal of hay is 4 francs in Tunis, the quintal of prickly-pear fruits would still represent a value of 60 centimes in nutritive elements, or 120 francs per hectare for a harvest of 20,000 kilos. This is a result which deserves attention, but they are not the complete results indicated by Wolff's analysis. What are we to conclude from these divergent results as regards the yield of the non-prickly kinds, and of the results as regards nutritive constituents? Evidently that there are prickly-pears and prickly-pears. Wolff has analysed one sort, and Bertainchand another. It may be mentioned that our informants spoke without any doubt as to there being different spineless kinds.

There is no doubt that some varieties are superior to others. "We find in Sicily several kinds with very remarkable fruit," said M. de Gasparin. "The noble variety is the one which should be cultivated by preference; it merits this by the size and quality of its flesh. The wild kinds are very much smaller and of inferior flavour."

Molina, in his Natural History of Chili, notes "two species of pricklypear which the Chilians call tuno, which produce very fine fruits, larger than the best European figs."

But are these varieties determined and described? Not yet, as far as I know. The fruit of the prickly-pear is too humble to be yet admitted into a pomology. It is distributed throughout the warmer temperate, and subtropical zones. The varieties of a plant cultivated over an area so vast, and for so long a period, should certainly be very numerous.

How shall we set about to obtain a knowledge of them?

Such a work cannot be accomplished with the same rapidity as by a collective effort. This is why I address myself to all friends of science under whose notice this appeal may come.

The first thing to do is to bring together all the species of Opuntia with known edible fruits, in order that they may be compared amongst themselves. The Tunisian Department of Agriculture will receive with gratitude the seeds of all the varieties of Opuntia from various parts of the world which may be sent to it, together with notes on the qualities and the varieties of which seeds are sent, their productivity, the manner in which they are cultivated, their mode of vegetation, and the analyses which have been made of their fruits. As to the varieties which can be pointed out in Tunis, we can engage to take cuttings of them.

Of two things one will be established-either that there now exist spineless sorts productive enough and with fruits rich enough for the culti vation to be at once recommended with confidence. This is possible enough, considering the little attention which has hitherto been given to this plant. Or it may be established that such a variety does not exist, in which case