REPORT 



COMPOSITION AND NUTRITIVE VALUE OF 

 COTTON-CAKE. 



AN important addition to our stock of feeding materials has 

 recently been made in the shape of cotton-cake. This cake can 

 now be bought according to its quality, at from 67. to 8/. per 

 ton, and appears to offer considerable economic advantages to the 

 feeder of stock in comparison with other descriptions of cake. 

 Several agriculturists, who have used it in limited quantity, 

 speak favourably of its nutritive properties, but precise com- 

 parative feeding experiments are yet required before the practical 

 value of cotton-cake, and its relative merits, in comparison with 

 linseed and other descriptions of cake, can be determined with 

 certainty. To my knowledge it is now being tried on a large 

 scale in various parts of this country, and ere long we may hope 

 to obtain the desired information. We shall then be able to 

 ascertain how far the theoretical value of cotton-cake, as deduced 

 from analysis, corresponds with its practical effects on the system. 



This cake is obtained on submitting to strong pressure the 

 oily seeds of the cotton plant (Gossypium barbadense), which, as 

 is well known, is cultivated extensively in the southern part of 

 the United States, in India, China, the interior of Africa, and 

 other warm climates. 



Cotton-seed yields a dark brown coloured, semi-liquid, and 

 agreeably smelling oil, which, in a purified state, is now used to 

 some extent for the usual purposes for which other kinds of oil 

 and fats are employed. The removal,, of the dark colour which 

 the oil possesses in a raw state appears to be attended with con- 

 siderable difficulties, which as yet have only been partially over- 

 come. This perhaps will account for the fact that even now 

 large quantities of cotton-seed are annually thrown aside as useless, 

 or are used to some extent as a manure. However the production 

 of cotton-seed oil has been steadily increasing, and large impor- 



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