I. AGRICULTURE AND RURAL ECONOMY. 375 



potash salts is, even in Germany, not considered economical 

 on the part of farmers, for they have learned that whenever 

 the cost of transportation of one hundred pounds of potassium 

 oxide exceeds about sixty cents, the higher grades become 

 the cheaper article. To pay an additional freight across the 

 Atlantic on 1800 pounds of material, wliicli we have in abun- 

 dance and cheaper at home, for the purpose of securing 160 

 to 200 pounds of potassium oxide, can not be the best course 

 to obtain a suitable supply. Hep. Sec. 3fass. Board of 

 Agric, 1875-6, 354. 



THE COMPOSITION OF AMERICAN WHEAT PRODUCTS. 



Important additions to our knowledge of the chemical com- 

 position and nutritive value of some of our common feeding 

 materials for cattle have been made by Professor Store r, of 

 the Bussey Institution of Harvard University, in analyses of 

 Western shorts (bran), middlings, and shipstuff. Until late- 

 ly very few trustworthy analyses of American vegetable 

 products had been made, and it has been necessary to de- 

 pend upon tables of European analyses for estimates of their 

 composition. The names given to the by-products from the 

 manufacture of wheat into flour vary in different parts of the 

 country. " Shorts " and " bran " are generally synonymous. 

 " Middlings " is usually applied to a meal-like product, rank- 

 ing in composition and fineness midway between shorts and 

 flour. The terms "millstuff" in Boston, "millfeed " in Chi- 

 cago, and "shipstufi"" in the South, seem all to apply to a 

 mixture of shorts and middlings, which include every thing 

 not flour that is separated from wheat. On comparing his 

 own results with the most trustworthy European analyses. 

 Professor Storer finds tliat these products in this country are 

 somewhat dryer than the corresponding European ones. 

 Three samples of Western shorts, for instance, average 11.65 

 per cent, of water, while the average of European bran was 

 13.24 per cent. This difference Professor Storer is inclined 

 to attribute to the greater dryness of the atmosphere in this 

 country. There was a similar difference in the amount of 

 albuminoids, the average in American shorts being 11.75 per 

 cent, and in European bran 13.44 per cent. For this two 

 reasons are suggested. First, the flour, which, as is familiarly 

 known, contains less albuminoid (nitrogen) than bran, is less 



