28 CLIMATE AND EESOURCES OP 



to maintain animal heat in the case of young growing 

 animals. In the case of grown-up animals the former causes are 

 wanting, and the food only suffers a loss of such materials as 

 are required to make good daily waste of tissue and to keep 

 up animal heat. According to this view of the case, the dung 

 of grown-up animals should be of greater manurial value than 

 that of young animals, as less is abstracted from it ; and such 

 in practice is found to be the case. 



Again, dung being "food minus growth," the quality of 

 the dung of an animal, as a manure, is dependent in a great 

 measure on the quality of the food supplied to it. The stomach 

 of an animal will only abstract from the food sufficient to make 

 good daily waste (except in the case of growing or fattening 

 animals), and should the food be rich in the constituents re- 

 quired for assimilation by the animal economy, the excess 

 will be rejected, and pass through the animal unassimilated. 

 On the contrary, should the food be poor in the constituents 

 required for assimilation, the percentage of those constituents 

 abstracted from it would be greater than it would be in the 

 case of a richer food, and the balance remaining would be 

 proportionately less. The constituents of the food, taken up 

 by animals for the nourishment of their bodies are those of 

 the greatest manurial value, and when an animal exists on 

 food from which it can barely abstract sufficient nutriment to 

 support life, its dung will be of the least possible value as a 

 manure, properly so called ; still the vegetable fibre and tissue 

 composing it will be valuable, as supplying a mechanical 

 means of improving the physical condition of the soil. 



The cattle in Upper India are driven out in the mornings to 

 pick up what few blades of grass and leaves of trees they can, 

 and on returning home in the evenings, some of them may 

 get a small supply of chopped or broken-up straw; their 

 food during the drier part of the year, from January till 



