ANIMAL GROWTH AND NUTRITION. 



237 



Second period of forty-nine days, straw substituted for corn- 

 fodder : food otherwise the same. 



* 800 straw, and clover 1,489. 



Better gains have been received in other trials, but these 

 cover the purpose in view. In the table it will be noticed 

 (in the second period for forty-nine days, per thousand 

 pounds live weight) lot 2 gained on thirty-five hundredths ^ 

 of a pound of albuminoids and five pounds and sixty-five 

 hundredths carbohydrates ; while lot 4, given one pound and 

 thirty-three hundredths of albuminoids and five pounds and 

 thirty-four hundredths of carbohydrates, gained nearly a 

 pound each, or a heavy per cent less of digestible material 

 than is accepted as necessary to maintain existence without 

 growth. In no case, for five years, has a combination of 

 grain and straw failed to do much better than German and 

 our authorities claim for the work of a given amount of 

 organic matter. That it does make a difference whence the 

 source of organic matter, this table, and all my experiments 

 at our College Farm, show. Compare the results of straw 

 with corn-fodder and grain, and straw against hay, and a 

 very material difference is at once noticed. Thus for eighty- 

 six pounds of organic matter in swale-hay and cotton-seed 

 meal, seventy-six in corn-stover and cotton-seed meal, and 

 sixty-five in oat-straw and cotton-seed meal, I have received 

 substantially the same results, in the better combinations, 

 as from a hundred pounds of organic matter in Timothy- 

 hay. These facts seem so contradictory to German work, 



1 The amides shown by the analyses are, as by old methods, estimated as 

 albuminoids ; so that the actual albuminoids consumed was less than shown 

 by the table. As many of the German foods contained a heavy per cent of 

 amides, their tables are subject to the same, probably greater, discount. 



