QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 193 



It is the cheapest, most economical and satisfactory way of feeding 

 milking cows, not used exclusively, but in connection with a proportion 

 of cake meal, and with a proportion of dry hay or fodder. Cows thus 

 fed thrive well and milk freel3\ giving sweet milk, making good butter. 

 For this reason it is every day growing in favor, especially as it is so 

 palatable and easily digestible. The ensilage of the present day is made 

 from well-grown, well-matured, well-eared corn— of course taken in 

 green condition, chopped into pieces of about one and one-half inches in 

 length. White Sheep Tooth corn is the best for the purpose, being very 

 abundant in the production of foliage. 



1036. Q. What is the object or work of the Agricultural Stations ? Agricultural 

 A. By their investigations they protect the farmer against sales of 



fraudulent fertilizers and cattle foods. They study cattle diseases and 

 advise preventive measures ; they investigate the habits of insects 

 injurious to agriculture and designate methods of destroying them ; they 

 study thecharacter of fungous growths ; they inquire into methods of irriga- 

 tion and into meteorological and climatic fluctuations and results ; they 

 report on qualities of soils, qualities of new cereals, forage plants, vege- 

 tables, fibres and fruits, action of fertilizers, plant nutrition and com- 

 ponent parts of soil drainage. They do entirely too much to enumerate 

 in a short description of their work, which is an extensive line of research 

 in the laboratory and hothouse, in the stable and dairy, in the orchard, 

 forest and field. They do so much original work and collect so much of 

 the results of work of other stations as to be important bureaus of agricul- 

 tural information. Every State has one agricultural station ; Connecticut, 

 New York, Alabama and Louisiana, each two. In the aggregate they 

 employ nearly 600 persons, and in 1894 issued over four and one-half 

 million reports and bulletins. The first American agricultural station 

 was established in 1875 in Connecticut, but this was thirty years after the 

 establishment of the first German agricultural station, which was at Moec- 

 kern. One of the most interesting of the many advanced agricultural 

 stations in Europe is that of Darmstadt, largely devoted to pot investiga- 

 tions, into plant nutrition and soil exhaustion. 



1037. Q. In what way did mankind find out what plants were edible? Edible 

 A. Such explorers as Livingstone, Hooker, DeCandolle and others, all Plants. 



found that uncivilized man in all countries knows a long catalogue of 

 plants, more or less nutritious, others injurious, others destructive to 

 life. In Africa the natives in the wilder regions are guided to a great 

 extent by what the baboons and monkeys eat. All wild tribes through 

 pressure of necessity have learned a great deal as to the effects, stimu- 

 lating, nutritious and medicinal, of many of their native plants, and a 

 consequential step is the removal of these plants, or the planting of 

 their seeds by the natives near to their huts, and thus the first steps are 

 taken in the line of selection, to be further continued by subsequent 

 selections of the best types, till after a time a heredity of form, color, 

 size and flavor, is well established. " 



