AGRICULTURAL TEXT-BOOK. l7l 



Animals Lave the power of digesting a greater or less propor 

 tion of tLat part of their food which is insoluble in water. 

 Even the woody fibre of the hay is not entirely useless as an 

 article of nourishment, (cj The most valuable constituents of 

 the grass, such as the albumen, casein, starch, sugar, &c., may 

 undergo great and ruinous change by fermentation and washing 

 before and after the hay is put in stack or barn ; so that ill-made 

 hay, exposed to rain, may be inferior in nutritive quality to the 

 coarsest straw, (c?,) The riper the straw or grass, the less solu 

 ble matter does it contain ; and soil, season, and manure will 

 equally affect the quality of hay. One field will grow a hard 

 wiry grass, while another will produce a soft and flexible plant, 

 and highly nutritious hay. In England, a much higher price is 

 given for hay cut off old grass fields, than for the first crop grown ; 

 and race and hunting horses are fed on hay over a year old, 

 new hay injuring their wind and condition, (e,) Thompson 

 found that the soluble matter of hay capable of being taken up 

 by cold water, was as much as 5 per cent, or nearly a third of 

 the whole soluble matter in hay. Thence we may form some 

 notion of the injury liable to be produced by every shower of 

 rain which drenches the fields during hay harvest. But hot 

 water will extract over 16 per cent, of soluble matter; and if 

 we consider the warmth of the soil and hay, and also of the 

 rain in summer, the loss in this country is probably much greater 

 than 5 per cent. (/J The bleaching of hay is owing to the 

 loss of wax, as much as 2 per cent of which may readily dis 

 appear. But this wax is important for fattening ; and bleached 

 hay is decidedly deteriorated in feeding qualities. In Scotland 

 100 parts of hay were found to be equivalent to 387^ parts of 

 grass ; or it requires nearly eight tons of grass to yield two tons 

 of hay to the acre. By late analyses at the Royal Agricultural 

 College, Cirencester, England, Italian Rye Grass was found 

 to contain : 

 Water (in natural or green state,) - - 80.770 



