256 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Question. The professor speaks of feeding clover " in- 

 telligently " to certain animals : what kind of animals, he did 

 not say. I would ask him to tell the members of the Board, 

 and for my special benefit, to what class of animals he would 

 feed his clover, that the refuse of the crop might be the best 

 possible material to be returned to the land. 



Professor Stockbridge. That is a very important ques- 

 tion, and one which cannot be fully answered in a moment. 

 But the point is this : plants are built up out of soil ; animals 

 are built up out of plants. If I am undertaking to reno- 

 vate an exhausted farm, and do not wish to carry away 

 any thing from the farm which has been developed out of 

 the soil, I must not put it into an animal or into a product 

 which I am immediately going to deport. If I undertake to 

 make a cow or a horse on my farm, if I use my products in 

 growing cattle, and send my cattle to Brighton, and that 

 material is washed down the sewers of Boston to the sea, 

 there is so much lost from my farm. If, however, I take 

 that material, and feed it to a mature animal, — an eight- 

 year old ox, or a four-year old sheep, — and simply make fat, 

 which is nothing but carbon, I have carried notliing away 

 from the farm when I deport the animal. If you would keep 

 your clover on the farm, feed it to mature animals, and save 

 all the manure, solid and liquid, as every judicious farmer 

 does, and of course it will go back to your farm. Of course 

 I know there are scores of milk-farmers here who want to 

 know how it will aifect their farms to sell milk. Sell butter ; 

 sell the carbon, which costs nothing, and which you can never 

 exhaust, of which the supply is as limitless as the air that 

 surrounds the globe ; sell the carbon in the form of butter 

 or in the form of fat, — and then you are robbing your farm 

 of nothing. 



INIr. Whitakek. What would you do with your skim- 

 milk? 



Professor Stockbeidge. Feed it to hogs ; kill them, and 

 sell them as fat hogs. I would buy up those hogs that they 

 bring from the West, and fat them on skim-milk. 



Mr. Whitakee. Will skim-milk fat them? 



Professor StocivBRIDGE. Yes, sir : it is better than whole 

 milk. 



Mr. Peirce. If I understood the professor's remarks 



