FARMING FOll SUCCESS, 79 



receiving the droppings from cotton seed meal than from that 

 covered with manure from corn meal. They, and others, h)ng used 

 rape cake as a manure. This food is a good cattle food. Gentle- 

 men in our State have used both cotton seed meal and bran as 

 fertilizers. I have done the same. I received at the rate of 49.4 

 bushels of corn and G,!)00 lbs. of stover from 1,000 lbs. of this 

 meal, where no manure gave 24.9 bushels corn and 2,480 lbs. stover 

 per acre. A great many car loads of bran have been used direct 

 as a manure in one section of New Hampshire, and the users tell 

 me that it is cheaper than superphosphates, the bran costing $15 

 per ton. There has been each ^ear a time when it could be thus 

 bought. A little chemistr}- will throw some light on this opinion of 

 our farmers. One ton of superphosphate will ordinarily contain 50 

 to 60 lbs. of nitrogen and 200 lbs. of phosphoric acid, and cost 

 $45. Three tons of bran will contain 153 lbs. of nitrogen, 87 lbs. 

 of potash, and 219 lbs. of phosphoric acid, costing $45. After 

 crediting to cotton seed meal the phosphoric acid and potash it con- 

 tains, this food remains one of the cheapest sources of nitrogen in 

 the market. Blood meal, meal scraps and fish are now used directly 

 as manures. It will be soon seen that I have used these manures 

 profitably as foods, and still had the great bulk left after so feeding, 

 as manure. With farm animals turning to growth, or otherwise 

 diverting from the excrement but about ten per cent, of the materi- 

 als of the food of use in plant nutrition ; with foods in the market 

 worth their cost for fertilization, it follows that feeding domestic 

 animals foods rich in the element of plant food, is our cheapest 

 source of manure, and that our true polic}' consists in the purchase 

 of such foods. Such a policy has almost no footing in American 

 farming, although it is rapidly becoming a practice. 



Science and Practice of Feeding. 



Fortunately these food materials named perform a double ofHce on 

 the farm. The class of foods having the highest value for manure 

 have the highest value as animal foods when rationally fed. Feed- 

 ing is a science resting for its data upon the facts gathered by the 

 actual experiments of a corps of trained investigators whose work 

 covers years of enquiry. As another will present this matter to 3'ou 

 I will only say on the science side of the question that all foods are 

 made up of materials that go to make flesh, and to produce work, 



