38 COCONUTS, KERNELS, AND CACAO. 



As far back as 1861, at the Royal Agricultural College, 

 Cirencester, it was experimentally established that kernel 

 cake was good stuff for cattle, but the Germans dis- 

 covered that palm kernel cake given to milking cows 

 would increase the amount of butter fat by as much as 

 over J per cent., so that by giving it to their cattle they 

 were able to get as much butter from nine cows as before 

 it took ten cows to produce. For that reason throughout 

 the German Empire for many years palm kernel cake 

 has been more valuable than it has been in England. 



At the end of 1914 there were only two mills in Britain 

 dealing with palm kernels, and their combined capacity 

 amounted to only 70,000 tons per annum. Since then, 

 however, a considerable development in this industry 

 has taken place, and new mills (e.g., at London and Hull) 

 have been erected capable of dealing with large quan- 

 tities, so that, in the near future, very large stocks of 

 palm-kernel cake will be at the disposal of the home 

 feeder. 



For the purposes of experiment, 2 tons of the cake 

 were supplied by Messrs. Lever Brothers, Port Sunlight, 

 who, in connection with their industry, crush a con- 

 siderable quantity of palm kernels. These experiments 

 have shown that palm-kernel cake is very highly digest- 

 ible, and that its productive value is much higher than 

 its chemical analysis alone would lead us to believe. For 

 this reason three cakes were used in equal quantities 

 throughout the experiment. For the purposes of the 

 experiment, thirty head of cattle, eighteen heifers, and 

 twelve bullocks, all cross-bred two-year-olds, were used. 

 These were divided into three lots of ten each each 

 lot consisting of six heifers and four bullocks. For a 



