WORCESTER SOCIETY. 217 



full evidence that carrots were good food for swine. For sev- 

 eral years past, I have kept my swine principally on carrots 

 through the winter months ; they have been boiled, a small 

 quantity of cob and corn meal added, and with the slops of 

 the house, have been the only food of my swine ; deprive 

 them of the carrots, and the remainder of their food would 

 have been insufficient to sustain life. My winter stock of 

 swine has usually consisted of breeding sows, and they have 

 uniformly been in such condition, that I was entirely willing 

 that my piggery should be visited by any one disposed to in- 

 spect it, or its tenants. The usual observation has been, that 

 "those swine are too fat, to do well in having pigs." I formerly 

 kept my swine on potatoes, as I now do on carrots, and they 

 have never done better than of late years. 



That carrots contain much nutriment, I cannot have a 

 doubt ; sufficient, as I apprehend, to induce farmers to grow 

 them in considerable quantities for the benefit of their stock: 

 that " when fed out in ordinary doses " they may so far im- 

 prove the health of the animal, as to enable it more completely 

 to digest their hay, by which to add to the covering of the ribs 

 and the secretions of the milk vessels. That either your 

 Bradford friend or myself was greatly in an error was most 

 manifest. After carefully recalling to recollection what I had 

 been able to obtain from books on this subject, my own expe- 

 rience, and that of others so far as it had come within my own 

 observation, without discovering the fallacy of my former 

 views, I was induced to inquire whether the opinions of the 

 Bradford farmer were correct, although expressed with much 

 confidence, and partially confirmed by the approval of two of. 

 the editors of your valuable publication, in whose agricultural 

 knowledge the public have placed so much reliance, that it 

 seems much like presumption to express a doubt. I was de- 

 sirous of further evidence. I read the communication to Mr. 

 Hawes, who h^s the immediate supervision of my farm, and 

 requested him to take two cows then giving milk, as much 

 alike as he could find them, ascertain what quantity of hay 

 they were then eating, continue to them the same quantity 

 of hay, but add to one of them a peck of carrots per day; and 

 after a trial of a week to change the carrots to the other cow, 

 watch the effect carefully, and to report to me the result. He 

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