116 AN EGG FARM. 



the cheapest grain we have, is the proper food for chicks, 

 and for laying fowls also, and you need pay no attention 

 to the everlasting hue and cry about this noble grain 

 being too oily. It isn't oily enough, and for either man 

 or beast is improved by the addition of lard or some 

 other form of fat. Ask one of these anti-corn cranks 

 to explain the almost universal craving of humanity for 

 butter to be eaten with bread. For a negro laborer at 

 the south, corn meal, with fat bacon or pork, makes a per- 

 fect food, with the addition of a small quantity of fresh 

 vegetables or wild fruit, the last as condiments merely, 

 or to furnish acids to assist digestion, for they do not 

 supply any strictly nutritive elements which the main 

 diet lacks. The corn without the fat would be almost 

 as incomplete as the fat without the corn. When the 

 negroes or poor whites are without pork to accompany 

 their universal diet of corn bread, they crave a shorten- 

 ing of lard in the latter, and failing to obtain this, some- 

 times use the oily kernels of black walnuts, or even the 

 oil obtained from certain species of fish. "But fowls 

 are not men," we hear some one exclaim. True, but 

 both are omnivorous. Fish, flesh, cereals, vegetables 

 and fruit are the appropriate food of both; the digestion 

 of both is improved by the acid of fresh green stuff, and 

 the perfect nourishment of both demands oily food. 



Even in the tropics fat meats are sought by those who 

 toil ; bread and fruits will not suffice. Conversely in 

 the Arctic regions, although much has been written 

 about the fondness of the Esquimaux Indians for oils 

 and fats, recent careful observers have stated that if 

 these Indians can get lean meat they will eat it in con- 

 nection with fat in very nearly the same proportion as is 

 usual among their white brethren in temperate zones. 



If it were not for the time and expense involved, corn 

 boiled or fried in some form of animal or vegetable oil 

 or fat would be the best possible staple for fowls, winter 



