EXPERIMENT STATION. 105 



work over to get the digestible nutrients. In the above rations 

 the indigestible matter varies from 10.66 pounds to 6.04 pounds? 

 and this means a corresponding difference in the internal work of 

 digestion. A certain bulk of food is normally required by rumi- 

 nating animals, but within reasonable limits, the less the amount 

 of indigestible matters, the less energy is expended in digestion 

 and the more is available for productive purposes, while the cele- 

 brated experiments of Miller on exclusive meal feeding seem to 

 indicate that this saving by concentrated fodder may be tempo- 

 rarily made very large. 



Still one more point remains to be briefly noticed. It may be 



said, as it is by some, that the results of foreign experimenters 



are o-ood for their circumstances, but that it is doubtful if they 



apply to the quite different conditions prevailing here. If by this 



is meant that it is doubtful if the German standards will prove 



the most profitable under our conditions of climate, etc., the claim 



may perhaps be admitted. The point is one which can be settled 



only by numerous carefully conducted feeding trials, made by 



those who have had training in the art of experimenting and are 



familiar with the precautions necessary in such investigations. 



If, however, what is meant is that the general laws of animal 



nutrition as worked out by other observers do not apply to our 



conditions, we can only say that such a claim has 'a very slender 



basis in fact. In the case of milk production, for instance, there 



are some things that are settled beyond reasonable doubt. It has 



been established that the supply of protein in the food has a 



direct and striking influence on the amount of milk produced, and 



this is just as true in Connecticut as in Saxony. If the addition 



of protein to a ration like one of those given above produced a 



larger yield of milk on a Saxon farm, there is no obvious reason 



why the same result should not follow on a Connecticut farm. 



The increase might not be the same — probably it would not be — 



but neither our climate nor our cattle are so different fi'om those 



of Europe as to give any reason for believing that the result 



would be any different in kind or largely different in degree. In 



one case the increase might be jjrofitable, and m the other the 



reverse — that would depend on other considerations. 



