SOLON ROBINSON, 1847 97 



lish the table/ The experiment thus far is very largely 

 in favor of the mush, bidding fair to produce enough to 

 pay toll and trouble for grinding, as well as for cooking, 

 and leave a profit. The number of pounds of good thick 

 mush, that one hundred pounds of meal, well-worked, 

 will make, is astonishing to anyone who has never 

 thought much upon the subject. It will not fall much if 

 any short of six hundred pounds. Mr. Ellsworth's kettle 

 holds just fourteen pounds of meal at a charge, and sev- 

 eral accurate weighings give over eighty pounds when 

 well cooked, and I saw myself that no more water was 

 used than the meal would absorb. But it must be cooked 

 — not merely scalded. A little salt is added, and occa- 

 sionally a little sulphur. 



Mr. Ellsworth assured me that he had proved the 

 mooted point of nutritive food in corn-cobs. He says, 

 "hogs 2uill live and thrive upon tvell ground cob-meal 

 alone! At first they did not take hold. I then added a 

 small quantity of meal of the grain, principally to make 

 the mass ferment quicker, and then they eat the whole, 

 and did well. I had great difficulty in getting the cobs 

 ground. Millers are so well satisfied in their own minds 

 that cobs are good for nothing, that they are not willing 

 to let the experiment be tried whether they are nourish- 

 ing or not. I am satisfied that twenty-five pounds of 

 corn-meal added to one hundred pounds of cob-meal, is 

 more valuable for feed for growing stock, than seventy- 

 five pounds of corn-meal alone." Such is the language of 

 Mr. Ellsworth. Experiments of this kind should be fur- 

 ther tried. One-fourth of the weight of a bushel of ears 

 of corn, nature never intended should be thrown away, 

 and cobs upon large corn-farms in the West are literally 



^ Ellsworth made his report in a letter of December 15, 1847, to 

 Edmund Burke, commissioner of patents. Annual Report of the 

 Commissioner of Patents, 1847, pt. 2:534-39. See also "Remarks 

 on the Nutritive Value of Corn Cobs," in American Agriculturist, 

 8:279 (September, 1849). Some of Ellsworth's later experiments 

 on his Lafayette farm are described in ibid., 8:348 (November, 

 1849). 



