071 the Feeding of Slock. 431 



for a certain amount of food. The more warmly we are clothed, the 

 less food is required, iDecause the loss of heat by cooling, and conse- 

 quently the amount of heat to be supplied by food, is diminished. The 

 cooling of the body increases the amount of food necessary. " If we 

 were to go naked (p. 22), like certain savage tribes, or if in hunting or 

 fishing we were exposed to the same degree of cold as the Samoyedes, 

 we should be able with ease to consume 10 lbs. of flesh, and perhaps a 

 dozen of tallow candles into the bargain daily, as warmly-clad travellers 

 have related with astonishment of these people. We should then be 

 able to take the same quantity of brandy or train-oil without bad eftects, 

 because the carbon and hydrogen of these substances would only suffice 

 to keep up the equilibrium between the external temperature and that 

 of our bodies." 



A want of warmth, then, is tantamount to a waste of food, and if we 

 apply this to the want of shelter to our sheep while feeding upon turnips 

 in the winter season, when the temperature of the nights is frequently 

 below the freezing-point of water, and this over 3,000,000 acres of tur- 

 nips in the kingdom, we shall find the loss of food very great indeed. Mr. 

 Childers of Cantley and Mr. H. S. Thompson of Kirby Hall have upon 

 a small scale fed sheep in sheds during the winter, and the former says, 

 thaFtRe sTieep in sliecfs 'consume nearly one-fifth less food and make 

 one-third greater progress than those fed with the very same food in 

 the open field, or very nearly the same food will feed double the number 

 .^.aCi'Jl^^P* ^^^'- Morton informed Professor Playfair that 200 sheep in 

 tlie open field eat 24 lbs. of swede turnips each daily; while another 

 100, having a covered shed and a yard to run into at pleasure, only eat 

 each 20 lbs. of swedes.* 



But besides the waste of food induced by the want of shelter, must 

 be added the want of economy in not using together with turnips food 

 which contains more nitrogen. " The increase of the mass of the body," 

 says Liebig, " the development of its organs, and the supply of waste, 

 all are dependent on the blood, z. e., on the ingredients of the blood, 

 and those substances only can properly be called nutritious, or con- 

 sidered food, which are capable of conversion into blood. To determine, 

 therefore," he says, " what substances are capable of affording nourish- 

 ment, it is only necessary to ascertain the composition of the food, and to 

 compare it with the ingredients of the blood. But the chief ingredients 

 of the blood contain nearly 17 per cent, of nitrogen, and no part of any 

 organ of the body contains less, and animals cannot be fed on mat- 

 ters destitute of nitrogenised constituents. But vegetable fibrine, 

 vegetable albumen, and caseine are the true nitrogenised constituents 

 of the food of graminivorous animals." And the learned professor's 

 book points out the discovery that these three vegetable substances 

 contain the same organic elements united in the same proportion by 

 weight, and, what is still more remarkable, are identical in composition 

 with the chief constituents of the blood, viz., animal fibrine and albumen. 

 These vegetable principles contain the chief constituents of blood, fibrine 



* Comparative experiments regarding the relative feeding properties of different kinds 

 of food are of no value unless the temperature of the places in Avhich the animals are 

 feil be the same. 



