258 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



of his eloquent, but, T must say, rather sophistical address. 

 I think he has treated the subject as it was left very skilfully 

 indeed. He has ignored very much that was said with a 

 great deal of art. I have no suspicion that our friend is a 

 " crank " upon the subject of ensilage : I have a slight one, 

 however, that he is an enthusiast. I hope he will realize his 

 sanguine expectations. I suppose that he must have slipped 

 out of the back door when I got about half way through, by 

 the way he uses the facts that I stated this forenoon. In 

 fact, he has gone upon the good old-fashioned idea of brush- 

 ing away exact statistical facts by a sweeping general obser- 

 vation. I am not aware that he has specified a single fact to 

 offset one assertion I made this morning. Always a farmer 

 myself, and always farming a farm of my own, I am always 

 careful not to make any general proposition that must rest 

 heavily upon mere theoretical deductions, and that I can- 

 not base upon facts taken. I think, Mr. Chairman, that I 

 have less respect for chemistry as applied to nutrition than 

 the gentleman claims for himself; for such observations as I 

 have made for a number of years, of cattle feeding on the 

 farm, lead me to believe, with the gentleman, that chemistry 

 is not yet competent to fix the value of food accurately. I 

 believe it would be very useful, if we were" buying a given 

 food, that we should buy it upon the basis of chemical analy- 

 sis ; but I should not expect that chemical analysis to meas- 

 ure with accuracy the value of that food in nutrition, or its 

 value as compared with what an analysis might show some 

 other food to contain. We have still need of a great deal of 

 skill in determining the value of food after we have bought 

 it upon analysis ; yet a chemical analysis might be, in its 

 proper place, a vast deal of use. There are various changes 

 going on in the maturing plant, whose significance is not 

 known : there are many things which the chemist, or animal 

 physiologist, cannot as yet find out in regard to the functions 

 in feeding of animals of the constituents of food ; so that, 

 upon that subject, I am fully as radical as the gentleman 

 himself. 



I think some of you may have been misled by the gentle- 

 man's misapplication of the terms that I used this morning. 

 He uses the word " unfair." I think he made a very unfair 

 use of my talk this morning. He says I spoke of feeding 



