116 FIRST LESSONS IN POULTRY KEEPING. 



of wheat with which it is compared. Without an analysis of every lot of every article he 

 feeds the feeder does not know how closely he approximates the standards he tries to apply 

 in scientific feeding, and is in reality as much in the dark and leaving as much to nature as one 

 who simply follows common practice. 



The plain truth about scientific feeding as it has been expounded for poultrymen is that 

 what there is of it cannot be applied by common poultrymen under common conditions, and 

 that it leaves out of consideration the variations in the needs of fowls from day to day which 

 must be reckoned with if there is to be anything like an exact adaptation of rations to actual 

 needs. 



And the essential difference between simple or natural, and scientific feeding of poultry is 

 that the first trusts much to inherent tastes and tendencies presumed to be implanted in the 

 organism by the creator, while the other depends wholly on arbitrarily assumed and arti- 

 ficial rules. 



The Summary of the Whole Matter. 



In a nutshell the question of scientific feeding is simply this: 



The exposition of it has an academic interest, but to attempt to put its formulas into practice 

 is to attempt to work a problem in which some of the necessary factors are not given, and can- 

 not be obtained. Our science of poultry feeding is but a " fragment of science." 



