No. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 775 



He told tliem cotton seed and linseed, although higher priced, were 

 better values. He had great difficulty in selling them. They mis- 

 construed his motives. To-day he has given it all up and sells what 

 they demand, and sells them as well as the goods very often. Now, 

 while the protein is not, in a slang phrase, the whole thing, still in 

 the present inchoate state of our knowledge it is wise advice in my 

 judgment to suggest that the dairyman fix his eye upon that guar- 

 antee, and when he has to buy for dairy stock to make that the main 

 proposition. One cannot in fifteen minutes tell the whole story of 

 this matter. It takes me a good many days in my class-room. But 

 that is the main proposition. That does not mean because cotton 

 seed meal carries 48 per cent, protein, the highest of any, that doesn't 

 mean that is the sole and only thing to buy. It is too concentrated, 

 too heavy. Second, the economical character of the seed ought to be 

 considered. Distillers grain and things of that kind, which are flaky 

 and light to open up the ration, are better adapted to the feed than 

 the bulky concentrate for the cow than are these heavy firm ma- 

 terials, like cotton seed and linseed. When I am talking about this 

 matter I usually go out of my way to throw a boquet, as it were, to 

 linseed meal, because though not so rich in protein as one or two 

 other materials, it is a great feed. It seems to me that the Ameri- 

 can public needs to be warned of one thing above everything else, and 

 that is as to the true character of these proprietary mixtures known 

 as the oats feed. A little Jew boy was standing in front of his 

 father's store one day, and he came in and he said, "Father, there 

 is a lot of little birds out in front there saying cheep, cheep, cheep." 

 He says, "Iky, go and get those birds and put them in the window so 

 they may say cheep, cheep, cheep to people." That cheap, cheap, 

 proposition to many of our ill informed dairymen is the main pro- 

 position. Our state pays three and one-half million dollars a year 

 for the purchase of foods from the West, and a million and a half 

 of that sum is paid for corn meal. And yet the last census and the 

 census of 1890 showed of the two states at the head of the states 

 of the Union in the matter of the number of bushels of corn to 

 the acre, to New Hampshire and Vermont. Yet Vermont farmers 

 sent a million and a half dollars a year to Kansas to buy concen- 

 trated sunshine. Purchase of corn meal for the purchase of oats 

 for the feeding of dairy rattle is an economical crime. The growing 

 of corn and leaving it right up on the stalk, and the putting of the 

 whole thing in the silo is a pre-eminently better way to treat that 

 plant. They tell a little story of a man who went down to Boston 

 one day and went into one of the cheap restaurants, and he called, 

 among other things, for bread and cheese. The cheese was made 

 from skim milk. He reached over to the butter, and he spread it 

 on top of the cheese. And he said, 'Come together here, you two, 

 what poor fools have separated you." Now, man plucks off the ear 

 from the stalk where God placed it and puts it in the crib, and takes 

 that ear and those of his fellows ears to the miller, and pays him a 

 tenth toll to grind, and then takes it back again and places that 

 corn meal, that stover, before the cow. That does not, so far as the 

 cow is concerned, add one jot or one tittle to the digestibility of the 

 matter or to the energy, but the cow does; as many an experiment 

 station and many a practical feeder has found, that the animal does 

 poorer work on those two w r hen they are divorced from each other 



