82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



our practice of adding salt to our food must be looked upon 

 as being, in part at least, a taste acquired by cultivation. 



Carefully conducted practical experiments by some of our 

 foremost agricultural chemists have settled that question ; their 

 experiments have reduced to figures what mere experience in 

 more favored localities in a general way seemed to indicate. 

 Boussingault proved by cows, that those which had been fed 

 with an addition of salt to their food did not yield more milk, 

 or contained more fat, or had increased in weight of flesh ; yet 

 they looked more healthy and more vigorous ; in fact, their 

 whole exterior had been highly improved as compared with 

 animals which had been fed with the same food without an ad- 

 dition of salt. Liebig came to the same result ; he found 

 in the case of two oxen, which were to be fattened in the stall, 

 and of which one received its food mixed with an additional 

 dose of salt, while the other one did not receive any, that 

 the latter one soon looked bristly, dull, inactive and sickly, 

 while the first one, which had received salt as an addition to 

 his food remained smoothly skinned, lively and vigorous. Pas- 

 ture-feeding on a good grass crop, with its accompanying limited 

 physical exercise in the open air, has been always considered 

 the most normal food of our domesticated herbiverous animals 

 as far as an aromatic, tender meat, with a liberal amount of 

 well distributed fat, is concerned. The well recognized su- 

 perioj' quality of meat from the cattle and sheep raised upon 

 the marsh meadows along the seashores of Northern Germany, 

 Holland, Belgium, England and elsewhere, has been ascribed 

 to a large degree to the fact that their food — the marsh grasses 

 — is frequently salted by the spray of the oceanic waters. Most 

 of those who are at present engaged — remote from access of sa- 

 line solution — with the raising and fattening of cattle and sheep 

 are taking lessons from the previous observations, and are using 

 freely salt, apparently with decided advantage ; they presume 

 that a proper daily dose of salt does aid in a well-regulated and 

 thus economical digestion ; for it seems to favor a speedy solu- 

 tion and assimilation of the food, and at the same time creates 

 an increased desire for water, which being promptly supplied 

 causes an increased secretion of urine and perspiration. As 

 nature has chosen these two ways, among others, to remove from 

 the animal system those substances, which either have served 



