HOW TO BE BETTER FARMERS. 67 



appropriate more perfectly the nutriment contained in other 

 food. It is on this principle, that a bushel of carrots and a 

 bushel of oats, are as good for a horse standing in your barn, or 

 at moderate work, as two bushels of oats, and not because the 

 carrots contain as much nutriment as -the oats, for they do not, 

 but they cause a more perfect appropriation of the nutritive 

 principles in both. It is very much so with all your cattle. If 

 you give them a few roots daily, they will not only devour 

 coarse food, which they would otherwise trample under foot, 

 but they will masticate it more courageously and digest it more 

 perfectly. The natural order is this, — more roots this fall, more 

 stock next winter, more manure next spring, and more crops 

 next summer. 



Do not understand me as advocating the keeping of more 

 stock than you can keep well. There is no worse mistake. In 

 all ordinary cases, — and it would be a shame if an extraordinary- 

 case happened more than once to the same man, — cattle should 

 be fed to the full, made to mature early, and to give a quick 

 return. The farmer's problem is how to keep much stock, and 

 to keep it well. 



The French have a proverb which runs something like this : 

 "No cattle, no agriculture; few cattle, little agriculture; many 

 cattle, growing agriculture." Some of their best writers lay it 

 down as a rule, that tlie annual production of cattle on a farm 

 should at least equal in value the annual production of the 

 fields. In this, I suppose, they would include the butter, 

 cheese, eggs, and other animal products. This rule, like most 

 others, has its exceptions, as in the case of the market gardener, 

 whose animal products would of course fall short of his vegeta- 

 ble products. We might except, also, the farmer on land 

 peculiarly adapted to growing the cereals, and perhaps some 

 others. But as a general rule, it is correct to say, that the ani- 

 mal should at least equal the vegetable products. Where it is 

 not so, the farm, in nine cases out of ten, is deteriorating, and 

 the farmer, in nearly every case, is becoming poorer. But you 

 will be the last to err on this point, and therefore I need not 

 dwell upon it. 



But is there not a kindred point on which you may err ? 

 How is it with the character of your stock ? We see on these 

 grounds fine animals. Is it so in your barns ? I presume that 



