Annual Report for 1914 of the Consulting Chemist. 271 



amount of it has been employed in the manufacture of com- 

 pound cakes, but the main part has been exported to Germany, 

 where its use, chiefly for milking cows, has been much more 

 appreciated than in this country. This outlet now being 

 stopped through the war, there is every reason why both palm 

 nut cake and cocoanut cake should be extensively and advan- 

 tageously used here, inasmuch as they are excellent foods, more 

 especially for dairy stock. One inconvenience attaching to 

 them is that they do not keep as well as do linseed and cotton 

 cakes, and that there is a tendencj- for them to turn rancid. 



Soya-bean seems not to have increased in favour among 

 practical feeders of stock, and but few samples of it have been 

 received. 



It is satisfactory, however, to record that " Bastol " and 

 similar " prepared sawdust " compounds sold as "• feeding 

 materials " seem to have disappeared from the market. 



A considerable rise in the price of linseed and cotton cakes 

 in the eai-ly part of the year no doubt drew attention to the 

 further use of home-grown foods, and, in particular, wheat 

 and other ofi'als. 



Reference has been made in earlier reports of mine to 

 adulteration practised with offals. A considerable impx'ove- 

 ment followed this mention and the taking of action, in. not a 

 few cases, under the Fertilisers and Feeding Stuffs Act. By 

 these means some of the grosser forms of adulteration, as, for 

 example, admixture with rice-husk, sawdust, gypsum, &c., 

 passed out of notice. But there appears to have been of late 

 a recrudescence of adulteration, and several cases have been 

 brought to light whei'e adulteration has been again practised. 

 This has taken the form of mixing, with the wheat offals, 

 offals produced from barley and oats. A further practice has 

 grown up of selling, under such well-known names as " Sharps," 

 " Middlings," " Toppings," &c., what is practically little more 

 than "flour" of inferior value with little or none of the "bran" 

 or husk. It is, no doubt, very hard to discriminate between 

 the different products of the milling of wheat ; for, while bran 

 is fairly understood as being the coarsest of the oft'als, and as 

 containing the most husk, between the other offals no clear line 

 can be drawn. In one district one name will be used, and in 

 another a different name for one and the same article. 



In all these offals — which should be the skin or bran of the 

 wheat, more or less finely ground according to the method of 

 preparation employed— a certain amount of the starchy portion, 

 or "flour," is still attaching. But the purchaser of offals for 

 pig-feeding and the like does not buy these for the sake of the 

 starch contents, but for the bran with its more nitrogenous 

 and mineral ingredients, and it may fairly be claimed that he 



