4 Composition and Nutritive Value of Cotton- Cake. 



tations into England of cake, chiefly from St. Louis and New 

 Orleans, have been effected during the past season. It may be 

 confidently expected that the practical difficulties that stand in the 

 way of the purification of the oil will soon be removed, and there 

 can be but little doubt that then a constant and large supply of 

 cotton-cake will be furnished to the English feeder of stock. 



The first cargoes of cotton-cake were imported into England 

 some years ago, but the trials of it were not very success- 

 ful. This need not surprise, for the introduction of every new 

 article into the market is beset with difficulties. Perhaps the 

 partial failures that attended the use of the early shipments of 

 cotton - cake arose from the crude methods of preparing it, 

 and the inferior, half-spoiled state in which it was given to 

 animals. Probably the first cargoes that were brought to Eng- 

 land found no immediate purchasers ; the cake had to be 

 warehoused for a considerable length of time, during which 

 it got mouldy by damp air, sour, and unpalatable, before it 

 found its way into the feeding stall. Even now some cotton- 

 cake is so mouldy and sour that it is hardly fit to be given to 

 animals. But there is another reason for the unfavourable opinion 

 entertained by those who tried the practical feeding value of this 

 cake when first imported into England. The albuminous soft 

 kernel of cotton-seed is encased in a hard, dark-coloured shell, 

 composed chiefly of woody fibre, and as the hard shell consti- 

 tutes a large proportion of the whole seed, and woody fibre 

 possesses little or no feeding value, all the cake that reached this 

 country some years ago being made of the whole seed, was of 

 inferior quality, in comparison with linseed or even rape-cake. 



I remember having analysed a sample of cotton-cake of this 

 description four years ago. Tt contained only 5J per cent, of 

 oil and more than 30 per cent, of woody fibre. 



Such inferior cake is still prepared in the United States as 

 well as in England. The cake, however, made in this country 

 from the whole cotton-seed is, I find, superior to the similarly 

 prepared cake of foreign make. 



For the last year or two a very much better article has been sent 

 over from the southern parts of the United States. It is prepared 

 from the shelled or decorticated seed, and is sold at present 

 as decorticated cotton-cake at 71. to 8Z. per ton, or at about 

 I/, to 30*. more than the ordinary cake made of the whole seed. 

 It occurs in commerce in two forms, namely, as thin and as thick 

 cake. The latter, on account of the inconvenience which it pre- 

 sents to the consumer (as it is not readily crushed by ordinary 

 oil-cake crushers), is reduced to a coarse powder by an American 

 firm, who are large importers of both thin and thick decorticated 

 cake. The coarse powder is sent to England in original bags, 



