



MANAGEMENT OF GRASS LANDS. 273 



consumes that fattens it, but the quality. Formerly nothing 

 but hay was used in fattening animals, but this was found to 

 be a tedious and expensive process, although of all vegetable 

 "substances nothing can be better than good hay for improving 

 the flesh of fattening cattle. Notwithstanding, beef cannot be 

 made to profit oi) hay alone. Of late years that is, since the 

 practice has become general in England and on the continent 

 oil and rape-cake has been generally used, and almost every 

 species of field root and likewise, what cannot be highly 

 recommended, if indeed it can be recommended at all the 

 grain and wash from distilleries.* 



Potatoes, mangel-wurtzel, carrots, parsneps, cabbages and 

 turnips of every kind, have been brought into general use, and 

 found highly valuable. But these roots must give place 

 though not entirely to the very superior claims of the ruta- 

 baga and the sugar-beet, the latter of very recent introduction 

 among us. They are adapted, admirably, to our soil and cli- 

 mate yield immense crops with proper cultivation are hardy 

 exceedingly nutritious and eaten with the greatest avidity 

 by all animals, who thrive astonishingly upon the sugar-beet 

 especially. For further particulars respecting the different 

 roots here named, the reader is referred to their respective 

 heads. A fair allowance of good, sound, nutritive hay should 

 not be omitted, with occasionally a mess of grain properly 

 prepared. Roots, be it remembered, are important auxiliaries, 

 not substitutes, in the economy of fodder. 



The cooking of all kinds of grain roots, &c. for every variety 

 of stock, is coming into very general practice, especially in 

 this country for this purpose various machines have been 

 constructed many of them on very simple principles, for car- 

 rying on the process of steaming with the greatest economy 

 and least consumption of time. In our chapter on farm im- 

 plements, we have given cuts of several, with explanations 

 annexed. The practice has been highly commended in all 

 our agricultural periodicals. The Farmer's Assistant says, 



* The practice of feeding animals on the refuse of distilleries, is very exten- 

 sively practiced both in this country and in England. This wash or refuse is 

 generally purchased by persons residing in the neighbourhood of our large 

 cities and towns, who supply them with milk, and, in such cases, constitute 

 almost entirely the sole food of milch cows. This practice is most pernicious; 

 and the reason, for this assertion must be apparent to every intelligent man 

 who will investigate the subject. That cattle will fatten on the refuse of dis- 

 tilleries is universally admitted. We find it stated in the second volume of 

 British Husbandry that eight hundred and ten oxen were fattened on the re- 

 fuse of twenty-five thousand seven hundred and fifty quarters of barley, and in 

 twenty weeks an increase of flesh was acquired, averaging to each of the cattle, 

 thirty-five stone of eight pounds each which, deducting five stone as the 

 value of the hay they consumed, leaves one hundred and eighty-four thousand 

 four hundred pounds of beef a most astonishing result. 



