PART I. 



Part I embraces Chapters I-IX. Chapter I which is 

 introductory discusses Live Stock and Successful Farm- 

 ing. Chapters II to IX discuss the laws or principles which 

 govern the feeding of farm animals. 



The successful feeding of farm animals is governed 

 by certain laws or principles, some of which are reason- 

 ably well understood. It may be that there are other 

 laws relating to this great subject that are not yet 

 evolved, or are only in the process of evolution. The 

 attempt to formulate those first referred to in regular 

 sequence, and in the order of relative importance, will 

 now be made. That this is no easy task in the present 

 state of knowledge of the subject will be apparent from 

 the statement that, so far as the author can ascertain, the 

 attempt to enumerate these principles as such has never 

 yet been made. The attempt, therefore, to formulate 

 these laws in the manner stated may be so far impossible 

 as not to preclude the necessity for some revision of the 

 order of arrangement with the further rolling backward 

 of the mists which, during long centuries, have shrouded 

 this subject of subjects in practical agriculture. 



As now understood by the author, the following are 

 the chief of the laws or principles that govern successful 

 feeding, and they are given in the order of relative im- 

 portance. They are such as relate : (i) To selection in the 

 animals to be fed ; (2) to the selection of foods for feed- 

 ing them; (3) to development in the animals; (4) to habit 

 in digestion and assimilation; (5) to keeping the animals at 

 rest; (6) to prolonging the period of usefulness; (7) to 

 pregnancy. These inexorable laws will now be discussed. 

 Like the laws of the Medes and Persians, they can never 

 be changed, except by Him who made them, hence, the great 



