AS FOOD FOR CATTLE AND SHEEP. 315 



of wliicli, in sufficient quantity, is indispensable to bring, so to 

 speak, the other substances which are abundant into play. For 

 to give heed to Liebig's " law of minimum " is to lay hold of 

 the key — it may be a small one — without wdiich the w^ay to 

 successful farming cannot be reached. All the farmer has to 

 guide him in ordinary circumstances to the selection of his 

 fertilisers is a general consideration of what he has taken out 

 of the land by crops in the past, and what he proposes to 

 extract in this way in the future. In the present state of 

 agiicultural education, most farmers, even if they had an analysis 

 of their land, would probably not feel themselves to be compe- 

 tent judges of vdiat are its principal deficiencies, and how these 

 can be best and most economically supplied. Xow we maintain 

 that all the neater value ouoht to be attached to rich farmvard 

 manure produced by cattle liberally fed upon supplemental food, 

 because it is known it must contain a mixture, in desirable 

 -proportions, of every one of the fertilising substances, with the 

 exception perhaps of phosphates, which almost every soil requires 

 to make it fertile for most general purposes. It is in the end as 

 cheap to every farmer as any other, and to most farmers it is, 

 in existincr circumstances, the safest and most desirable, inas- 

 much as it is most likely to convey to his soil what it really 

 wants. Bein!]f a mixed all-round manure, it restores to the land 

 a portion of everything that was taken from it, and special 

 circumstances and requirements can be taken into account in 

 the selection of the supplemental fertilisers. 



The practice of using home-grown grain to a considerable 

 extent as supplemental food for stock has much to recommend 

 it, and never more so than at the present time. It has of late 

 become increasingly difficult for the British farmer to dispose of 

 various kinds of agricultural produce in their raw state with 

 profit, unless, indeed, in special cases, v.'here, from the proximity 

 of his holding to favourable markets or other exceptional cir- 

 cumstances, he can sell it to advantage. Hence the practice of 

 manufacturing the bulk of the crops raised into beef and mutton, 

 thereby making them "walk to market," is being found the most 

 remunerative to follow. But in the process of converting them 

 into a walking condition, there is ample room for exercising skill 

 and discretion. We would t:ike occasion to mention, in this 

 connection, the system ]»ursued by ^Ir ^V. T. Sproat, Borness, 

 Kirkcudbright — a member of a family and also a place both 

 long associated with the best s]K'cimens of beefers produced in 

 the south-west of Scotland. T\w, dry-trough food used by ^Ir 

 S|)roat in feeding cattle consists of a mixture of various ingre- 

 dients, ])rin('ipally oats, barley, wheat, and cake. His practice 

 is to mix the draft-grain of the above three varieties — about 

 • equal weights of each — and to grind it in a grist mill driven 



