AS FOOD FOR CATTLE AXD SHEEP. 297 



Both parties, and indeed all analysts of experience, admit 

 and testify that, however produced, many crops of turnips 

 contain 92 and even 93 per cent, of water, and that the solid 

 constituents in them are lessened in a proportionate degree. 

 Thus, some bulbs, fairly representing large crops, contain only 7 

 per cent, of solid matter, ^vhile other fair specimens from 

 ditierent fields and differently manured, show as much as 12 

 per cent, of solid ingredients. Moreover, not only is there a 

 great variation found in the percentage of solid matters found in 

 different bulbs raised on different classes of soil, and with 

 different manures, but whatever be the percentage of solid 

 matter, the proportion of heat-producing, fattening, and flesh- 

 forming matter therein is found to be considerably affected by 

 the same influences. Thus, crops which show on analysis the 

 same percentage of gross solids may yet differ greatly in their 

 nourishing properties. There is a wide field open for scientific 

 experimentalists to make more precise and reliable investigations 

 and discoveries in this department than have yet been made; but 

 it has been so far clearly established by many independent in- 

 vestigators, that, be the causes what they may to which they are 

 to be attributed, such diversities as we have indicated do in 

 reality exist. These are points to which most agriculturists 

 hitherto have not been sufficiently alive. It has been too much 

 the custom to look upon turnips simply as turnips, without 

 realising the difference there may be between them in composi- 

 tion and nourishing qualities, and consequently in money value. 

 In the meantime let us realise that there are turnips and 

 turnips, hoping that scientific experimenters may ere long 

 discover, for our benefit the main causes which contribute to 

 the existing differences. 



Turnips too loatcry to constitute the Sole or even Main 



Food of Live Stock. 



Now, our contention is, that turnips are far too watery in 

 their composition for it to be prudent or economical to make 

 them the sole or even the principal food of live stock. It is 

 true that the greater portion of the weight of an animal is made 

 up of wiiter (store cattle, sheep, and })igs contain water in the 

 proportion of from GO to ()i^ per cent, of their entire live weight), 

 but this falls far short of being nine-tenths of their live weight, 

 and therefore it may legitinuitely be infeiTed, that when, say, a 

 sheep is sup]>orted entirely uj)on turin'ps it is swallowing an 

 excess of water. Unerring instinct leads a duml* l>rute, if fed 

 upon dry or moderately muist food, to partake uf that quantity 

 of liijuid, ami nothing more, wliicli is g(jod for it; and this, 



