DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 321 



brings the army ration or fuel supply of the fighting machine 

 down to practically an irreducible minimum of five main type- 

 fuels, lacking any one of which disease and breakdown are cer- 

 tain — bread, beef, fat, sugar, and other fruit juice or vege- 

 tables." 



Again Dr. Woods Hutchinson speaks of *'bread, beef and 

 sugar," as the dietetic trinity, also again, he speaks of ''bread, 

 meat and sugar" as the "three great staples." Thus very recently 

 the army food experts have discovered that sugar is a very 

 necessary article of diet, what good old Dame Nature discovered 

 thousands of years ago (if not millions), having provided in 

 the lacteal fluid which is the natural food of the young of all 

 warm blooded species, both animal and human, this element to 

 an equal amount, practically, with any other constituent, not 

 excepting the nitrogenous. The makers of baby food under- 

 stand this, though makers of calf meal substitutes for milk, do 

 not seem to have discovered the fact. (As an instance, the sub- 

 stitute ration for skim-milk used by the Indiana Experiment 

 Station in feeding the three calves exhibited at the National 

 Dairy Show in Chicago a few weeks since, side by side with 

 three others which were fed skim-milk, as the main part of the 

 diet, consisted of hominy meal, blood meal, linseed oil meal and 

 red dog flour), and even Henry, in his "Feeds and Feeding," 

 dismisses the subject with the statement that sugar as a feed 

 has the value of starch. If this is so why not feed the army on 

 potatoes? Or why shouldn't wheat bread suffice? Or what is 

 the matter with good corn meal? Isn't sugar nearer the end of 

 the process of digestion than starch, since starch, which is a 

 more complex chemical compound, must be converted into sugar, 

 by the enzyme ptyalin, an element of the saliva ? Therefore, the 

 process of digesting and assimilating starch consumes more food 

 fuels than the process of digesting and assimilating sugar (?). 



MILK SUBSTITUTES FOR CALF FEEDING. 



Large claims are made for substitutes for milk for feeding 

 calves, such as Blatchford's Calf Meal, and others. It is a fact 

 that calves can be raised more or less successfully on these sub- 

 stitutes. But it is yet a question with many, as to whether 

 these substitutes will grow as good heifer calves, which will 



21 



