ANIMAL GROWTH AND NUTRITION. 259 



forty pounds of ensilage a day, and took that as the standard, 

 and four quarts of bran. I distinctly said, when I first spoke 

 of that amount, that I used it for the purpose of showing 

 some of the fallacies that had been propounded. I afterwards 

 used sixty pounds of ensilage and five pounds of meal as the 

 amount generally claimed as used by those feeding ensilage, 

 and said, that, in my experiments, I had fed with equal suc- 

 cess less organic matter in dry foods. In illustrating this 

 point, I said that Professor McCook, in actual experiment, 

 fed a given number of pounds of dry matter in this very 

 same ensilage, which amounted to eighteen pounds and three- 

 tenths digestible nutrients against the same amount in air- 

 dry foods, and the air-dry foods came out ahead. In my 

 feeding-rations that I named to you, I used two pounds less 

 of digestible matter, and got as much milk as he records, — 

 twenty-three quarts per cow. Now, there is an exact fact. 

 That is not a general observation ; that is not guess-work. 

 There is this honest cow behind it, that cannot tell a lie, you 

 know. She is behind all these statements. Now, if the 

 gentleman will give me one single absolute fact, verified by 

 his own experience or that of others, that is contradictory of 

 this, I shall be glad to hear it. I have also quoted Professor 

 McBryde's experiments with ensilage, where he weighed 

 every thing, and had an honest steer behind it. He used 

 more organic matter in the ensilage than I did. Further than 

 that, I do not think that Professor McBryde took out of the 

 silo all the dry matter he put in. He supposed there was a 

 loss ; but I assumed that every thing came out of the silo 

 that he put into it. I also remarked that fifteen tons to the 

 acre was this year's product. I said that was the amount the 

 farmers were getting ; but afterwards I stated that twenty- 

 five tons was the standard. I do not believe that the average 

 result of New-England farming is twenty-five tons. I asked 

 an intelligent and thrifty farmer in the river-valley, who has 

 one of the most fertile farms in New England, how much he 

 raised, and he said twenty tons. "Do you think," I said, 

 " that is as large a crop as would be raised on land capable 

 of producing fifty bushels of corn to the acre ? " — " Yes, sir, 

 as large as would be raised on an average farm. I can as 

 easily raise sixty bushels of corn as I can twenty-five tons of 

 corn-fodder." And my own experience tells me that twenty- 



