388 APPENDIX, 



margarine, which showed marked superiority in the 

 effect ; and I now learn from Mr. Rliind that he is at 

 present using with success the pure oleine, prepared by 

 Messrs. Price & Co., from cocoa-nut oil, one of the 

 unctuous class. That linseed and others of the drying 

 oils are used in medicine for a very different purpose, 

 it seems unnecessary to state. 



The oleine of oil is known to be more easy of con- 

 sumption and more available for respiration than mar- 

 garine — a property to which its use in medicine may 

 be attributable. If we examine the animal fats, tal- 

 low, suet, and other fat, they are almost wholly of the 

 solid class, stearine or margarine, closely resembling or 

 identical with the margarine in plants ; whilst butter is 

 composed of oleine and margarine, combining both the 

 proximate elements found in vegetable oils. 



It seems worthy of remark that a cow can yield a far 

 greater weight of butter than she can store up in solid 

 fat ; numerous instances occur where a cow gives off 

 two pounds of butter per day, or fourteen pounds per 

 week, whilst half that quantity will probably rarely be 

 laid on in fat. If you allow a cow to gain sixteen 

 pounds per week, and reckon seven for fat, there will 

 only remain nine pounds for flesh, or, deducting the 

 moisture, scarcely three pounds (2.97) per week, equal 

 to .42, or less than half a pound per day, of dry fibrin. 



The analyses of butter show a very varying propor- 

 tion of oleine and margarine fats : summer butter usually 

 contains of oleine sixty and margarine forty per cent., 

 whilst in winter butter these proportions are reversed, 

 being forty of oleine to sixty of margarine. By ordi- 

 nary treatment the quantity of butter during winter is 

 markedly inferior. The common materials for dairy 

 cows in winter are straw with turnips or mangel, hay 

 alone, or hay with mangel. If we examine these mate 

 rials, we find them deficient in oil, or in starch, sugar, 

 etc. If a cow consume two stones or twenty-eight 

 pounds of hay a day, which is probably more than she 

 can be induced to eat on an average, it will be equal in 

 dry material to more than one hundred pounds of 



