PRINCIPLES OF FEEDING. 37 



animals merely as expensive macMnes for the manufacture of 

 manure ; and unless it be possible so to feed cattle as to cover 

 our expenses, we had better abandon the practice altogether, 

 and obtain our manure from other sources. We believe that it 

 is possible so to feed as to make both ends meet. Let us 

 examine the progress that has been made. In Scotland, where 

 feeding was largely pursued in the days before linseed cake 

 was known, the custom was to give sliced turnips ad lihitum, 

 and long hay. The quality of the swedes being good, excellent 

 beef was made, though the process was rather slow, and 

 decidedly expensive. This barbarous practice is still the rule, 

 though we are glad to know that the pulper is slowly forcing 

 its way into favour. In vain has Dr. Lyon Playfair shown that 

 heat is an equivalent for food, and that every manifestation of 

 force is accompanied by loss. Scotchmen, as a rule, still persist 

 in pouring gallons of cold water, in the form of watery turnips, 

 into their bullocks, thereby lowering the temperature of the 

 body to such an extent that the animals may be seen to shiver 

 after a hearty meal, and much extra fuel (i.e., food) is consumed 

 in raising the temperature thus needlessly lowered. A large ox 

 will eat as much as 1-J to 2cwt. of sliced roots a day ; 90 per 

 cent, being water, we have more than twenty gallons of fluid : 

 how much heat must be absorbed in raising this to the tem- 

 perature of the animal's body ! The effect is similar to pumping 

 too much cold water into the boiler of an engine. The tempera- 

 ture falls rapidly, and extra fuel is required to regain the 

 original condition. By the introduction of linseed cake a 

 reduction was effected in the quantity of roots and hay, but 

 the system of feeding was still defective. The mixture of 

 different materials into a compound suitable for digestion was 

 rendered possible only when the chaff-cutter, and more lately 

 the pulper, were introduced, and we must regard these inven- 

 tions as of the utmost importance to agricultural success. 

 Every farmer who keeps stock, whether he fattens them out 

 or only grows them, should have a chaff-cutter and pulping 

 machine. The mere fact of reducing the food into a form 

 which renders it more easily digested, though important, does 

 not half express the value of these inventions. It is the means 

 they afford of economising the more costly part of our food 



