TRAXSACTIOXS. 345 



teaches us that health and comfort arc promoted by a 

 mixture of meat and vegetables and bread in our food, so 

 one article of diet will secure all the advantages of many. 

 Health may be preserved and flesh gained while men lived 

 on potatoes only; but the strength, the ability of hard 

 work is not secured. When the Irish fed, at home, on 

 plenty of potatoes with perhaps the addition of buttermilk, 

 they were fat and rosy. But when put to hard work here, 

 they usually broke down for a while, until they had gained 

 strength from more nourishing food. 



Various ingredients enter into the composition of the 

 body — sugar, oil, fibrin, lime &c. ; and to procure these, 

 different articles of food are requisite. Neither sugar, nor 

 starch, nor grass, nor grain will increase the weight of flesh 

 and stability of frame, and at the same time maintain health. 

 Fat may perhaps be laid on while the animal suffers in 

 health, and some physiologists assert that excessive fat is 

 always indicative of disease. At all events the process of 

 laying on fat, may be carried so far as to render the animal 

 unfit for human food. Common sense should teach us that 

 various kinds of food should be used in feeding cattle, and 

 experience confirms the idea. The Shakers, who perhaps 

 exercise as much judgment as any persons, and are as suc- 

 cessful in agriculture, declare that carrots arc ''exceedingly 

 wholesome," superior to potatoes, both as an alterative 

 medicine and a producer of flesh. Of course, judgment is 

 to be employed in this matter as in every thing else ; and 

 ought a man to be discouraged by what may seem the un- 

 favorable result of a single experiment ? 



Carrots or other roots should be clean and nicely cut up 

 and mixed with cut hay, or some other dry food. That 

 which contains the most fattening qualities, will in this 

 way be hindered from constipating the animal by the laxa- 

 tive properties of the roots. Carrots may not increase 

 the flow of milk in cows, but they do improve its quality, 

 directly by nutriment, and indirectly by keeping the cows 



