104 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



growth. The chemical analysis of the time had furnished 

 most valuable iufonuation regarding the general character of 

 many of our fodder plants as far as the quality and the 

 quantity of their proximate organic constituents are concerned, 

 yet it had not given all the information needed to pronounce 

 upon their exact feeding value. 



As only that pait of the food consumed can participate in 

 the process of animal nutrition, which, by the aid of the 

 secretion of the digestive organs enters into solution and sub- 

 sequent circulation through the animal system, it is but 

 natural that the rate of digestibility of our prominent farm 

 crops in various stages of growth, as well as in case of vari- 

 ous kinds of farm animals, could not fail to engage the 

 attention of agricultural chemists. 



They directed their efforts in two directions : 



First, they improved their mode of analyzing fodder sub- 

 stances. The alterations were made with a view to secure 

 analytical results which would closer correspond with the rates 

 of digestibility noticed in actual feeding experiments. Since 

 1860, one mode has been used in the majority of fodder 

 analyses (Henneberg, Stohmanu, Heiden). The advantage 

 of this course consists in the fact that all analyses since that 

 year have a strictly comparative value, as far as the new 

 results are concerned. 



Second, new feeding experiments were carried on with the 

 direct purpose to ascertain by competent hands the actual 

 transformation which the different constituents of the fodder 

 plants suffered by their passage through the system of differ- 

 ent kinds of farm stock. 



A lately published compilation of carefully conducted feed- 

 ing experiments (E. Wolff in Mentzel's and Lengerke's Kal- 

 ender 1882, IBd. '83) shows that one hundred and eighty- 

 two articles of fodder have thus far been tested, regarding 

 their digestibility ; seventy-eight experiments were carried 

 on with cattle, three hundred and ninety-four with sheep, 

 twenty with goats, thirty-five with horses, and four to five 

 with swine. The subsequent tabular statement of feeding 

 experiments by Julius Kiihn in Halle, 1880, is not without 

 interest in this connection as a matter of reference. 



