224 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



rations based on chemical analysis, and this is the first observa- 

 tion of that kind. His tables containing the composition of 

 agricultural fodder-crops were the first and most complete 

 of the time : they referred, however, merely to the percentage 

 of water, nitrogen, and ash. Lawes and Gilbert entered 

 upon their extensive and interesting course of experiments 

 with stock-feeding at Rothamsted, near London, about twelve 

 years later, in 1848. Emil Wolff began the succeeding year, 

 1849, his investigation, of a similar character, at Mockern, 

 the first agricultural experiment station in Germany. 



It is a peculiar circumstance in the history of the science 

 of stock-feeding, that at the very time when Boussingault 

 at Bechelbronn entered upon his previously-mentioned feed- 

 ing-experiments, and when Liebig at Giessen created a sen-^ 

 sation in the scientific world with his comprehensive discus- 

 sion on the chemistry of food and the relation of the latter 

 to the principal functions in the animal life, leading agricul- 

 turists in Germany, in particular, exerted themselves to 

 introduce a new empirical mode of classifying the agricultural 

 fodder-crops by recommending a good meadow hay as the 

 standard (=100) for the determination of their relative 

 feeding-value. The amount of any articles of fodder which 

 produced an apparently equal feeding-effect under similar 

 conditions, as one hundred parts of a good hay, or the 

 amount, which, considered from a financial point, produced 

 similar results in the general farm-management, was called 

 its hay-value : in most instances both considerations con- 

 trolled the decision. The convenience, for the practical 

 farmer, of having assigned to the different articles of fodder 

 one definite relative feeding-value, could not be denied. And 

 as long as these so-called hay-value tables had no other pur- 

 pose than to express within a limited territory approximate- 

 ly the relative market-values as compared with hay, they 

 have rendered a good service ; but as soon as the attempt 

 was made to turn them to account as a basis for fodder- 

 recipes, or, in other words, whenever their economical value or 

 their market-price was identified with feeding-values or their 

 relative physiological effect, serious disappointments in prac- 

 tice became unavoidable. The circumstance that the kind 

 and the relative amount of the different organic and inor- 

 ganic substances contained in the various articles of fodder, 



