40 DICKSON ON 



my experience goes I do not put any value on boiling or 

 steaming cut hay, or straw, linseed, beans, and pea meal, for 

 all old animals, horses, cows, and pigs. I steep in cold water 

 say twenty-four hours before using. For young calves, young 

 pigs, and for one or two feeds in the day for dairy cows, I 

 think well cooked warm food useful. 



I am, Sir, 



Your most obedient servant, 



EDWARD McKANE 

 To Thomas Du^gan, Esq., 



101, Middle Abbey Street, 

 Dublin." 



I am happy in having from Mr. McKane's pen, through Mr. 

 Duggan, his method of preparing linseed for cattle feeding, as 

 from the many years he has had as a practical man, he must 

 be looked up to as an unquestionable authority, for as he has 

 spared no expense in bringing his farms at Ballyharden, 

 (which I recollect him getting into possession of, about the 

 year 1820) from a worn out condition to the highest state of 

 perfection, his experience in agricultural matters are well known 

 over Armagh, the most prosperous county in Ulster, therefore 

 as Mr. Warrens, a farmer in Trimingham, Norfolk, has got 

 his name up since 1843, in England, and also in Ireland, 

 through the circulation of the Belfast Flax Society's Reports, 

 as the originator of the secret of grinding and boiling linseed- 

 meal into a mucilage for cattle feeding, recommending what 

 Mr. McKane practised thirty years ago, if not more, mixing it 

 with chaff, cut hay, turnip-tops, mangel wurzel leaves, and 

 other roots. It is not doing justice to Irish farmers, and Mr. 

 McKane in particular, to allow Mr. Warrens to plume himself 

 on being an originator, while in reality he is as great a copyist 

 in preparing seed for cattle feeding as he is in the science of 

 Flax management after the crop has been grown ; and his 

 several letters to me in 1843 and 1844 in my possession, will 



