274 ANNUAL OP SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



in the former one ; but they had been arranged with reference to certain 

 practical questions as well as to the more scientific bearings of the subject. 

 Thus, those interested in the growth of sugar had long wished to obtain 

 the introduction of the lower qualities of that article, for feeding purposes, 

 duty free. The subject of the remission of the malt-tax, for the same 

 object, had also frequently been agitated. According to the results of ex- 

 periment, (numerous tables of which were exhibited in the room, and in 

 which the animals had been made to rely for about one-third of their total 

 food upon the starch or sugar employed,) it appeared that absolutely iden- 

 tical amounts of the dry substance of the starch and sugar, which had 

 thus been tried against each other, had been both consumed by a given 

 weight of animal within a given time, and required to yield a given 

 weight of increase. The identity, therefore, in feeding value, which had, 

 from the known chemical relationship of these two substances, been hith- 

 erto assumed, was thus experimentally illustrated. If, therefore, sugar 

 had no higher feeding value than starch, the relative prices, weight for 

 weight, of sugar and the starchy grains generally used for feeding pur- 

 poses, but which also supplied the needful nitrogenous constituents, 

 would afford an easy means of estimating the probable economy of the 

 use of the former. These new results were also consistent with direct 

 experiments, published by the authors some time since, " On the Compar- 

 ative Feeding Value of Malted and Unmalted Grain." It was true that 

 malt and other saccharine matter might serve, in some degree, to give a 

 relish to the food, and thus induce the animal to consume more, which 

 in "fattening " is always a consideration ; but this incidental benefit could 

 not counterbalance much increased cost : hence, it did not seem probable 

 that any extensive- use of malt for feeding purposes w r ould be such a boon 

 as had been supposed. The proved equivalency of starch and sugar in 

 food was also of interest in reference to some other of the views maintained 

 by the authors in their former paper. Thus, it had been shown that a 

 fattening animal might store up very considerably more fat than existed 

 ready formed in its food ; and this produced fat was doubtless, in a great 

 measure, due to the starchy and saccharine substances, which constitute so 

 large a proportion of the non-nitrogenous constituents of our staple vege- 

 table foods. It was these, too, which, in practice, served largely to meet 

 the requirements of the respiratory function, which it had been shown, 

 under ordinary circumstances, measured to such an extent the amount of 

 food demanded by the animal system. 



ON THE RELATIVE VALUE OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF MEAT AS 



FOOD. 



M. Marchal took twenty grammes of the muscles of the pig, ox, sheep, 

 calf, and hen, which contained neither sinews nor cellular tissue, nor adher- 

 ing fat, except what naturally exists between the muscular fibres, and 



