373 ANNUAL RECORD OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY. 



Digestion of Foods by Swine, 



Experiments are reported by Wolff, Wildt, and Iluiden, 

 who with assistants have tested the digestion of quite a list 

 of materials, such as barley, maize, pea-meal, cocoa-nut cake, 

 potatoes, roots, milk, flesh-meal, fish-guano, and in one case 

 cockchafers. Sour milk is not wholly digested by swine ; but 

 it seems to increase the digestion of other foods, as grain, fed 

 with it. Cocoa-nut cake proved a palatable and useful food 

 for swine. The same is true of cockchafers, dried and ground. 

 The digestibility of flesh-meal made of the residue left from 

 the preparation of Liebig's meat-extract in South America 

 lias been tested quite extensively. Wolff found, as the aver- 

 age of seven experiments, 90. G per cent, of the albuminoids 

 and 87.3 per cent, of the fat of the flesh-meal to be digested 



by pigs. 



Digestion of Foods by Sheep. 



Experiments on the digestive and nutritive values of vari- 

 ous materials fed to sheep are reported by Wolff and Kell- 

 ner, Weiske and Wildt. The most interesting results are 

 those obtained with the use of animal foods, blood-meal, flesh- 

 meal, and fish-guano. The general object of these experi- 

 ments has been to test the digestibility and nutritive value 

 of these foods, and the question whether they can be used to 

 advantage to supply nitrogenous material in fodder for her- 

 bivorous animals. There is no reason, in the nature of the 

 case, why they should not; and the several aecurate trials 

 that have thus far been made coincide with former experi- 

 ence in showing that the flesh-meal made of the residue left 

 from the preparation of Liebig's meat-extract, dried blood, 

 and fish-guano, are very easily digested ; that though some- 

 times not very palatable at first, yet the animals soon get 

 to like them, and that they form a very valuable food. In 

 feeding fish-guano to sheep Kellner found 90 per cent, of the 

 nitrogenous substances, 7G per cent, of the fat, and 15 per 

 cent, of the mineral matters digested. Wildt found that 

 sheep digested 95 per cent, of the albuminoids, and 98 per 

 cent, of the fat of flesh-meal. 



