342 - REPORT—1852. 
consumed, the figures at the same time include the amounts which have been 
expended in the respiratory process. 
Looking down the entire columns of Table V., it is at once seen that wherever 
clover-chaff was employed, that is to say, wherever there was a large amount 
of innutritious woody fibre, the gross amount of non-nitrogenous substance 
consumed to produce a given amount of increase is always great. The ana- 
lysis of the excrements of this series showed, indeed, that there was, in re« 
lation to the non-nitrogenous matter consumed in the food, a very much 
larger proportion of it voided by the animals than in the case of the series 
where the amount of woody fibre in the food was less. This, therefore, must 
be allowed for in comparing the figures in the column. It will at once be 
seen, when due allowance has thus been made, that the amounts of available 
non-nitrogenous substance consumed to produce a given weight of increase, 
are at any rate much more nearly uniform than are those of the nitrogenous 
constituents. Of the differences which will still remain after the allowance 
for woody fibre has been made, many can be again reduced by a consideration 
of the different equivalents of the remaining available non-nitrogenous con- 
stituents ; as for instance, when in comparable cases these contain, in one 
instance, more of oil, and in another more of the starch‘series of compounds. 
A less amount of the former than of the latter is required to produce the 
same resulting increase in the animal; and again, less of the starchy series 
than of some of the peculiar products of the root crops. 
In the column showing the proportion of the total nitrogenous substance 
consumed to increase produced (Table V.), we have a much wider range of 
difference than in that of the non-nitrogenous, and much wider, indeed, than 
can be explained away by such considerations as have above been alluded to 
in reference to the latter. It is true that these figures cannot, any more than 
in the column of the non-nitrogenous constituents, be taken as showing ab- 
solutely proportional nutritious values of the matters represented; for as we 
have before observed, the figures assume the whole of the nitrogen of the 
food to exist in the form of proteine compounds, which obviously would not 
be the case with the succulent and unripened produce, such as the roots and 
clover-chaff; and hence, this consideration must more affect the correctness 
of the statement of nitrogenous constituents consumed for a given result in 
the sheep experiments than in those with the pigs, where the foods employed 
were ripened seeds. But, as we have observed, the differences in the figures 
in the Table would seem to be too great to be satisfactorily accounted for by 
the correction of any errors arising from this cause. : 
Looking at this Table V. rather more in detail, we see, taking the first two 
pensin Series 1, which are comparable so far as the description of the ad libitum 
food is concerned, that whilst the non-nitrogenous substance consumed to 
produce 100 lbs. increase in weight is very nearly equal in the two cases, yet 
that of the nitrogenous constituents varies in the two in the proportion of 
from three to two; but a difference in the nature of the nitrogenous substance 
cannot be supposed to have made a difference so great in the amount of con- 
stituents consumed to produce a given result. On the other hand, the higher 
capacity of the oleaginous matter of the oil-cake than of the starch, &e. of 
the oats, is sufficient further to lessen the but small difference in the amounts 
of the non-nitrogenous substance in the two cases, In pens 2, 3 and 4 of 
the first series of sheep, we have all but identical amounts of gross nitrogenous 
substance consumed for a given amount of increase; but this would be of the 
most highly elaborated kind in pen 2 with the oats, and the least so in pen 4, 
with turnips only ; and in the latter, besides having less of available nitrogenous 
substance, the respiratory and fat-forming capacity of the non-nitrogenous 

