178 Composition and Nutritive Value of 



fattening animals, and that it surpasses almost all other articles of 

 food in its theoretical value as a fat-producer. The proximate 

 composition of articles of food unquestionably affords useful indi- 

 cations of their properties ; but such indications are insufficient 

 to determine with certainty the real nutritive value of food. 

 Analysis may point out the existence of a large amount of oil or 

 fat in a substance, but it does not decide whether these matters, 

 as in the castor-oil beans or croton beans, possess medicinal pro- 

 perties, or whether, like linseed- or rape-oil, they are available 

 in the animal economy for the production of fat. On these and 

 other points that readily suggest themselves to feeders of stock 

 desirous of using a hitherto untried food, practical experience has 

 to be appealed to for a final decision. Fully impressed with the 

 propriety of submitting palm-nut meal to a sufliciently decisive 

 experimental test before giving a definite opinion of its economical 

 value, I procured a supply from Messrs. Smith, which I placed 

 in the hands of Mr. Coleman, the late manager of the farm 

 attached to the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. 1 ex- 

 pected in the course of three or four months to have reported on 

 the result ; however, more than a year elapsed before the feeding 

 experiments could be said to have been fairly concluded. 



Well-fed animals, liberally supplied with succulent, sweet roots, 

 good linseed-cake, hay, and other palatable food, it is well known, 

 do not relish a change, if the substituted food happens to be less 

 palatable than that to which they have been accustomed. Palm- 

 nut meal is certainly not so nice to the taste as linseed-cake or 

 swedes and hay ; some difficulty consequently was experienced in 

 inducing animals to eat it, and neither the cow-man nor the 

 person in charge of the pigs possessed the requisite patience to 

 give the meal a fair trial, and both declared it to be little better 

 than sawdust. After repeated attempts to overcome the prejudice 

 of the cow- and pig-man, the meal was consigned to the granary, 

 where it remained for nearly ten months. By that time the store 

 of oil-cake was almost consumed, the supply of roots ran short, 

 and the price of all feeding-materials was very high. Under 

 these circumstances an application for a fresh supply of oil-cake 

 for the use of the sheep was not very favourably received by Mr. 

 Coleman, who gave the shepherd lil^erty to use the despised palm- 

 nut meal. Probably somewhat stinted in food, the sheep took to 

 the palm-meal at once, and after a few days ate it up greedily, 

 and, what is more, throve upon it remarkably well. All who had 

 seen the sheep before they had received palm-nut meal, and after 

 they were fed upon it for onlv a short time, were unanimous in 

 attaching a very high value to this meal. The shepherd, indeed, 

 soon learned to prefer it to the best linseed-cake, and had the 



