TABLES OF NUTRITIVE VALUES. 225 



in common with the particular degree of the digestibility of 

 each of them, might exert a controlling influence on the final 

 decision regarding the question, " which article of fodder is 

 the most nourishing, and in the end the most economical 

 one," did not yet receive a deserved consideration. 

 \ This important oversight in the arrangement of the tables 

 for comparative hay-values became, at first, but little notice- 

 able, on account of the limited choice of fodder-crops char- 

 acteristic of the then ruling system of cultivation. The 

 change of cultivation, however, from the three-field system 

 to that of the rotation of crops under the leadership of 

 Albrecht Thaer, the father of modern agriculture, rendered 

 the fodder question more complicated. The new system of 

 cultivation favored the raising of a greater variety of fodder- 

 crops. Hoed crops, clover, and other leguminous plants, 

 proved, for various reasons, to be valuable crops in a general 

 farm-management. Their introduction increased in a marked 

 degree the chances of making stock-feeding again a remu- 

 nerative branch of general agricultural industry without 

 having extensive and good pastures as an unfailing fodder 

 resource at command. 



To assign to each new crop, or each new refuse material 

 derived from other branches of industry, a proper position 

 in the current tables of hay-values, presented more difficulty 

 from year to year. Experimenters equally well qualified 

 arrived quite frequently at widely differing results ; for in- 

 stance, one distinguished agriculturist found one hundred 

 pounds of a good hay equal to one hundred and fifty pounds 

 of rye-straw ; others, even as high as five hundred pounds of 

 straw; one calls two hundred and twenty pounds of beet- 

 roots equal to one hundred pounds of hay ; whilst others con- 

 sider that amount equal to three hundred and fifty pounds, 

 and even to five hundred pounds of beet-roots. The connec- 

 tion of the names of distinguished agriculturists, as Thaer 

 and others, with the earlier history of hay-value tables, as 

 well as the subsequent exertions of Emil Wolff (1854) and 

 others to save its best feature, i.e., a definite numerical, rela- 

 tive feeding-value for each article of fodder, by proposing to 

 make the chemical analysis of a good average meadow-hay the 

 future basis of a classification of fodder-crops, secured to it 

 a controlling influence on the management of stock-feeding 



