258 KEPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



hundred pounds of tbe fish scrap made by Goodale's process added to 900 

 lbs. of the poorest hay would make a mixture equal in composition to 

 1,000 pounds of the best hay. Three hundred pounds of the same fish-food 

 with 1,700 lbs. of oat straw would be equal to a ton of the best hay. 



Tt is clear, then, that what our farming wants, to make stock-raising 

 profitable, manure plenty and rich, and crops large and nutritious, is 

 nitrogenous material for foods. 



One of the cheapest, most useful, and best forms in which this can be 

 furnished is in fish products. In proof of this we have the testimony 

 of both extensive experience and accurate experimenting. 



Experience in use of Jish as food for stocTc. — Feeding cattle on fish in 



Massachusetts. 



319. The earliest account which I have met of fish as food for domestic 

 animals is the following extract from the Barnstable [Mass.] "Journal," 

 of February 7, 1833 : 



" Feeding cattle on Jish. — The cattle at Provincetown feed upon fish with 

 apparently as good relish as upon the best kinds of fodder. It is said 

 that some cows, kept there several years, will, when grain and fish are 

 placed before them at the same time, prefer the later, eating the whole 

 of the fish before they touch the grain. Like one of old, we were rather 

 incredulous on this subject, till we had the evidence of ocular demon- 

 stration. We have seen the cows at that place boldly enter the surf, 

 in pursuit of the offals thrown from the fish-boats on the shore, and when 

 obtained, masticate and swallow every part except the hardest bones. 

 A Provincetown cow will dissect the head of a cod with wonderful 

 celerity. She places one foot upon a part of it, and with her teeth tears 

 off the skin and gristly parts, and in a few moments nothing is left but 

 the bones." 



Tlfe inhabitants of Provincetown are not the only people who feed 

 their cattle upon fish. The nations of the Coromandel coast, as well as 

 in the other parts of the East, practice feeding their flocks and herds 

 with fish. The celebrated traveler, Ibu Batuta, who visited Zafar, the 

 most easterly city in Yemen, in the early part of the fourteenth century, 

 says that the inhabitants of that city carried on a great trade in horses 

 in India, and at that period fed their flocks and herds with fish, a practice 

 which he says he had nowhere else observed. 



Experiment of Mr. Lawes, in England, with Jish as food for swine. 



320. In 1853 Mr. J. B. Lawes, of Eothamshead, England, reported 

 several extensive series of experiments " On the Feeding of Pigs," in 

 which were tested the effects of bean, lentil, Indian corn, and barley 

 meals, bran, and dried Newfoundland codfish as foods for fattening and 

 making manure. In speaking of the series in which the fish was fed 

 with maize, barley, and bran in different proportions, Mr. Lawes says: 



" In the series * * * where we have * * * a comparatively 



