Defeated Bracken On the subject of machines useful to husbandmen,
a really great success has been won by a cheap and simple instrument— the Holt Bracken Breaker—of which I gave some account in this place two years ago. Bracken, a lovely fern in its place but hateful to the farmer, especially the sheep farmer, has eaten up and is eating up hundreds of acres of good grazing in a great many districts—to give only my own limited experience, in Merioneth, in North Devon, in Yorkshire and in South- West Scotland. The nature of the ground where it chiefly flourishes makes cutting difficult and very expensive. Most of such difficulties and expense are overcome by the loose, bruising bars of this machine. The Universities, including the Welsh and the Leeds University, have helped with research work ; and the invention has stimulated discovery. Two botanical facts emerge : first, if bracken is crushed at the moment when its crozier, if the word may be used, is about to uncurl, it may never recover; second, crushing or bruising as contrasted with cutting induces disease in the plant. Bracken, like nettles and many other weeds, may be weakened and finally exterminated by three cuttings a year with any instrument. It is the distinction of the new method that it reduces the number of applications and in other respects makes a costly process cheap. Some small technical experiments have recently been made.
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