New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 67 
an increase of starch. This knowledge has had an important in- 
fluence on the economy of corn production for silage purposes. 
THE DIGESTIBILITY OF CATTLE FOODS. 
Considerable work? was done in the earlier years of the Experi- 
ment Station in determining the digestibility of various cattle foods, 
including alfalfa, orchard grass hay and corn meal. The digestion 
coefficients derived from these experiments are now incorporated 
in the general tables of digestibility of catile foods. Such deter- 
minations were useful and important in the earlier days when very 
little was known of the digestibility of characteristic American 
products. An attempt® was made to discover the influence of roots 
upon the digestibility of grain rations. It was concluded that the 
addition of roots to a hay ration decreased the percentage of digest- 
ibility of the albuminoids and increased the digestibility of the car- 
bohydrates. As this work was carried on with only one animal 
and as the digestibility of the roots was assumed, the conclusions 
are of doubtful accuracy. Digestion experiments* conducted in 
1884 with fodder corn, silage, soja bean fodder, and hay, are also 
open to the objection that the digestibility of the grain fed with 
these materials was assumed to be the same as those shown in 
German tables. 
TIIE RELATION OF THE NUTRITIVE RATIO TO THE PRODUCTION OF MEAT. 
At the time the New York Station began its work, discussion 
was rife concerning the compounding of rations and the influence 
in the ration of the relative amounts of digestible protein and 
digestible carbohydrates. Naturally in planning feeding experi- 
ments, this was one of the points first considered. Two experiments 
comparing rations for fattening were conducted, one with heifers 
and the other with both steers and heifers, the animals in all cases 
being approximately two years old. The conclusions failed to ratify 
the ratio for meat production suggested at that time in the German 
feeding standards. In the case of the first experiment? with two 
heifers, one made a better gain on the more nitrogenous ration and 
the other a larger gain on the less nitrogenous ration, the difference 
* Rpts. 3:26 (1884); 4:341-349 (1885); 5:337 (1886) ; 6:408, 428 (1887) ; 
7273-279, 304-307 (1888); 8:130-150 (1889). 
* Rpt. 8:145 (1889). 
*Rpt. 3:26 (1884). 
° Rpt. 7:292-297 (1888). 
