animals, and thus enables the feeder to combine more nitrogenous food in the diet of his animals.

Fifth. It enables the feeder to turn everything raised into food for his stock, without lessening the value of his manure. Indeed, the manure made from steamed food decomposes more readily, and is therefore more valuable than when used in a fresh state. Manure made from steamed food is always ready for use, and is regarded by those who have used it as much more valuable, for the same bulk, than that made from uncooked food.

Sixth. We have found it to cure incipient leaves in horses, and horses having a cough for several months at pasture have been cured in two weeks on steamed feed. It has a remarkable effect upon horses with a sudden cold, and in constipation. Horses fed upon it seem much less liable to disease; in fact, in this respect, it seems to have all the good qualities of grass, the natural food of animals.

Seventh. It produces a marked difference in the appearance of the animal, at once causing the coat to become smooth and of a brighter color-regulates the digestion, makes the animal more contented and satisfied, enables fattening stock to eat their food with less labor, (and consequently requires less to keep up the animal heat,) gives working animals time to eat all that is necessary for them in the intervals of labor; and this is of much importance, especially with horses. It also enables the feeder to fatten animals in one-third less time.

Eighth. It saves at least one-third of the food. We have found two bushels of cut and cooked hay to satisfy cows as well as three bushels of uncooked hay, and the manure in the case of the uncooked hay contained much more fibrous matter, unutilized by the animal. This is more particularly the case with horses. These have been the general results of our practice, and, we presume, do not materially differ from those of others who have given cooked food a fair trial.

OPINIONS OF AMERICAN AND ENGLISH FARmers.

George A. Moore, at the New York State Fair discussion, 1864, says: "I was feeding sheep and cutting for them timothy hay, millet, carrots, and feeding with bean and oat meal. Before steaming, I found, by weighing, I was putting on two pounds of flesh per week. After steaming, I put on three pounds per week, and the stock eat the food cleaner, and I noticed they laid down quietly after feeding. I also experimented with sixty-four cows. Used one of Prindle's steamers; had a quantity of musty hay which I cut and steamed. They would eat it entirely up, and seemed better satisfied with it than the sweetest unsteamed hay. Steamed food does not constipate the animal, the hair looks better. I think cutting and steaming combined insure a gain to the feeder of at least thirty-three per cent. The manure resulting from feeding steamed food is worth double that from feeding in the ordinary way. Have kept eighty head of stock, and had a surplus of food, on a farm where, previously, only fifty were carried through, and hay bought at that. After cows come in, steamed food increases the milk one-third, and the cows do better when put out to grass." George Geddes, in the same discussion, says: "I find if I take ten bushels of meal and wet it in cold water, and feed twenty-five hogs with it, that they eat it well; but if I take the same and cook it, it will take the same number of hogs twice as long to eat it up, and I think they fatten quite as fast in the same length of time. By cooking you double the bulk."

A. B. Conger, ex-president of New York Agricultural Society, said at same discussion: "But steaming alone is not sufficient in the preparation of the food. It must be first wet, so that if left alone ten hours it will heat. Water in large proportion must be added to the hay or straw after cutting. And so prepared and steamed, thirty head of stock may be kept on the same amount of food as twenty on unprepared food. The mistake made in the early experiments in

this country and England was, that the food was not sufficiently wet before steaming."

Professor Mapes says, Transactions American Institute, 1854, page 373: "Raw food is not in condition to be appropriated to the tissues of animal life. The experiment, often tried, has proved that eighteen or nineteen pounds of cooked corn is equal to fifty pounds of raw corn for hog feed. Mr. Mason, of New Jersey, found that pork fed with raw grain cost twelve and a half cents a pound, and that from cooked food four and a half cents. Cooked cornstalks are as soft and almost as nutritious as green stalks. Cooking is an improvement that pays. Cattle can be fattened at about half the expense upon cooked food, in a warm stable, that others can out doors upon raw food."

S. H. Clay, of Kentucky, says: "Fed two hogs on uncooked corn in thirty days 405 pounds, and they gained 42 pounds; while two hogs fed on cooked corn meal for thirty days ate 270 pounds, and gained 80 pounds. The food was then reversed, and the two hogs that had previously had dry corn, were fed on cooked meal. In twenty-six days the two hogs that were fed on dry food ate 364 pounds of shelled corn, and gained 44 pounds; while the two hogs fed on cooked meal ate, during the same time, only 234 pounds, and gained 74 pounds." Here it appears that a bushel of raw corn makes 5 pounds of pork, while a bushel of cooked meal makes 171⁄2 pounds.

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James Buckingham gives, in the Prairie Farmer, an experiment with cooked corn meal, corn in the ear, and raw meal. He put three hogs into separate pens. One ate three and a half bushels of corn in the ear in nine days, and gained nineteen pounds. Another ate, in the same time, one and three-quarter bushels of corn ground, and gained nineteen pounds; while the third ate, in the same time, one bushel ground and boiled meal, and gained twenty-two pounds." The society of Shakers, at Lebanon, New York, communicated the following to the agricultural report of the Patent Office: "The experience of thirty years leads us to estimate ground corn one-third higher than unground as a food for cattle, and especially for fattening pork. Hence it has been the practice of our society, for more than a quarter of a century, to grind all our provender. The same induces us to put a higher value upon cooked than raw meal; and for fattening animals, swine particularly, we consider three of cooked equal to four of raw meal. Our society, annually, for some twenty-seven years, has fattened 40,000 to 50,000 pounds of pork, and it is the constant practice to cook the meal, for which purpose six or seven potash kettles are used."

Such is the general tenor of the testimony of those who have tested cooking fairly in this country. It will be seen that most of the experiments relate to cooking grain. Steaming coarse fodder has not been extensively practiced here, but when a fair trial has been given, the result has been quite satisfactory.

Professor Horsfall, of England, has practiced mixing a special food for milch cows, to produce a large yield of milk of good quality, and to keep up the flesh of the cow in a full flow of milk. He says: "I now proceed to describe the means I am using to carry out the purposes which I have sought to explain. My food for milch cows, after having undergone various modifications, has for two seasons consisted of rape cake five pounds, and bran two pounds, for each cow, mixed with a sufficient quantity of bean straw, oat straw, and shells of oats, in equal proportions, to supply them three times a day as much as they will eat. 'The whole of the materials are moistened and blended together, and, after being well steamed, are given to the animals in a warm state. The attendant is allowed one to one and a half pound per cow, according to circumstances, of bean meal, which he is charged to give each cow in proportion to the yield of milk; those in full milk getting two pounds each per day, others but little. It is dry, and mixed with the steamed food on its being dealt out separately. Bean straw, uncooked, is dry and unpalatable; by the process steaming it becomes soft and pulpy, emits an agreeable odor, and imparts flavor

of

* *

*

and relish to the mess. In albuminous matter, which is especially valuable for milch cows, it has nearly double the proportion contained in meadow hay. Bran undergoes a great improvement in its flavor by steaming, and is probably improved in its convertibility as food. Rape cake has a large proportion (nearly thirty per cent.) of albumen, rich in phosphate and oil. During May my cows are turned out on a rich pasture near the homestead, towards evening they are again housed for the night, when they are supplied with a mess of steamed mixture and a little hay, each morning and evening. I have cooked or steamed food for several years, and my experience of its benefits is such, that if I were deprived of it I could not continue to feed with satisfaction."-Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society of 1856, page

224.

Mr. Mechi, near London, has also practiced cutting and steaming straw mixed with materials similar to Professor Horsfall. He estimates straw worth about ten dollars per ton to feed after steaming. His experiments have been quite extensive, and the results most favorable to cooking food. His practice has not generally obtained yet in England, but it is constantly extending, and in this country stock feeders are just beginning to turn their attention to the subject

AMOUNT OF STRAW AND COARSE FODDER WASTED.

If we take the amount of grain and Indian corn raised in the United States, as by the census of 1860, we shall find, by allowing forty bushels of grain to the ton of straw or corn fodder, that there were about 30,000,000 of tons. Now, at least one-third of this is wasted for every purpose except manure, and vast quantities not even used for that. Suppose we estimate this at one-half the value put upon it by Mr. Mechi, or five dollars per ton, and we have the enormous sum of $50,000,000 wasted, for want of proper economy, in a single year. We believe this estimate much below the real loss. These facts are worthy of a thorough examination by the farmers of the whole country. Let them study their own interests. Many of them will see where they have thrown away enough in ten years to double their property. Let them educate their sons for their calling. Impress upon their minds the necessity of a thorough knowledge of all the processes of nature connected with the growth of plants, and their uses in sustaining the animal economy. Impress them with a sense of the importance of their occupation, and of its true elevation in the scale of human affairs. Teach them that no occupation or profession in life requires more accurate or more thorough knowledge. Teach them that no occupation brings honor to the individual, but the individual to the occupation. Above all, teach them to shut their eyes to nothing, to examine all things, and to select that which is good.

COMPARATIVE VALUE OF CATTLE FOODS.

THE attention of the farmers of the country is now turned with more earnestness than ever before, to the raising and fattening of cattle and sheep, and for this there are several concurrent reasons.

The abrogation of the so-called reciprocity treaty, and the restrictions here after to be placed on the introduction from Canada of cattle and sheep, which have been brought to our markets in great numbers, afford a sufficient reason for increasing our own production.

The rinderpest, that terrible disease that has proved so fatal to the cattle and sheep of Europe, will long show its effects, and the destruction of so many thousands of cattle in England cannot fail to advance or sustain the price of our own beef. Another very strongly operating reason is found in a steadily growing feeling among the farmers of the west and northwest, that it will hereafter be more profitable to devote a larger portion of their lands to the production of meat and wool than to keep them exclusively for wheat growing.

The rates of transportation have been placed so high, that many farmers cannot send their grain to market at a paying price. Such-and there are thousands will only grow grain enough for their own home consumption, and raise and feed cattle and sheep, which can be brought to market at less cost.

That the economical management of food in fattening domestic animals is of the highest importance, no one will for a moment deny; yet how few among our farmers are really acquainted with most of the great principles which are involved, or understand the causes of which they in their practice see only the effects. They learn from experience that some kinds of food contain greater fattening properties and some greater milk-producing qualities than others, yet are content with this imperfect practical knowledge, and pay no attention to an investigation of the causes of these differences.

It may be said that the education of our farming population precludes the possibility of such investigation. This is true in a measure, and the labors of some of the deepest thinkers and most scientific men of the age, although ab sorbed in this special departinent, have added still more to the difficulties attending the study of this exceedingly interesting subject by the employment of terms and experiments only adapted to the comprehension of those who have already acquired at least a partially scientific education. But although this fact may partly account for the existing lack of knowledge of this branch of natural science, there is no doubt that the greater portion of it is attributable to the common habit of neglecting to investigate phenomena constantly under our notice, because of our familiarity with them.

It is not, of course, to be expected that the farmer can have opportunities for scientific investigation of these phenomena, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that he might, in the common experiments which he is constantly making, by a judicious observation and analysis of some of the results, arrive at a sort of sys tem, capable of a practical arrangement and adaptation, instead of following the beaten track of routine adopted by his ancestors, without even an effort at improvement. It is not enough that he should know that some kinds of grain or some roots possess fattening properties exceeding those of others, but he should understand why this is the case, and be able, in the possession of this knowl edge, to arrive at the greatest results with the smallest possible outlay.