No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 557 



men counterfeit it) to make many a hard morsel go down 

 easier. Young men there are enough poor dairymen in the country. 

 We do not need any more, but there is abundant room for good ones, 

 and surely merit both its reward. 



CONDIMENTAL FOODS. 



By DR. WM. FREAR, State College, Pa. 



One, entering the general store of almost any cross-roads village 

 in the State, may see displayed in good view from the vantage point 

 of the stove surrounded by much-whittled, well-worn benches, bright- 

 tinted posters showing rearing horses filled to such excess with life 

 that they can no longer tread all-fours upon the solid earth; great 

 steers that have somewhat the form of types we know, but dimen- 

 sions suggesting kinship to the elephant; and good fat hens, of gi- 

 gantic size, each set upon a pyramid of hundreds of eggs. 



We might suppose the merchant to be a school director over-sup- 

 plied with samples of geological charts and aiming to educate the 

 public with glimpses of palaeozoic times; or an agricultural idealist, 

 portraying his nodons of the results to which a thousand years of 

 scientific breeding and feeding might attain. On closer examina- 

 tion, however, the posters are seen to respectively announce that 

 these zoological wonders belong to the present time; that the rear- 

 ing steed is old Bob, the plough-horse, after a short course of small 

 doses of A. B. C. Condition Powder; that the fearful ox has reached 

 his swollen size owing to the additional assimilation induced by 

 adding a few spoonfuls of O. P. Q.'s Stock Food to his ordinary 

 ration; and that the good fat hen has attained to such simultaneous 

 fatness and egg-producing power by the stimulating effects of a few 

 mouthfuls daily of X. Y. Z.'s Poultry Food. 



For one, it is claimed, that ''when added to other feeds it is a 

 means of growing prime beef, brighter in color, wavy or marbled 

 in texture, and with pure white fat in much less time than under the 

 present system of feeding." For another, that "by using 25 pounds 

 of it, a saving of as much as 2.50 pounds of corn will be secured." 



For some of these foods it is roundly claimed that the well of all 

 domesticated species alike thrive unwontedly when these particular 

 brands are fed, and that, at the same time, all the ills to which such 

 flesh is heir, are cured by the healing influences of these same foods. 

 For others, it is declared that they are especially adapted to exer- 

 cise such twofold beneficence for but one species, while another 

 food mixed by the same manufacturer, is similarly adapted to some 

 other particular species. As Dr. Winton well says, "Were the 

 claims of the manufacturer all valid, a condimental food which 

 would cure gapes in chickens might be expected to increase the flow 

 of milk of cows and also to cure hog cholera." 



They all possess one common character — that of a price far ex- 

 ceeding those of even the most valued concentrated foods, since 

 the latter scarcely exceed two cents per pound in cost, while the 



