62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



its variety of products, now worth $30,000,000 a 3'ear, tlien 

 wasted. It was a pare theory ; but the theory, beiug based 

 upon adequate information, ultimately gained the sanction 

 of all the practical men in cotton production, as theory 

 always ought to and always will when it is well grounded. 

 There is no man so sure of bringing practical results as a 

 true theorist. It is not very long since what were stigmatized 

 by the name of oftal — the secondary products of grain — 

 were cast into the river from the great flouring mills of 

 Minneapolis ; at the present time the bran of the wheat, 

 forming a part of this secondary product, is worth more per 

 ton than the whole wdieat, because farmers have learned how 

 to use it as food for cattle, but have not yet mastered in full 

 the true theory of feeding wheat in the grain although great 

 progress has been made this year. I advise you to send to 

 the secretary of the Kansas Board of Agriculture, Topeka, 

 for a most exhaustive report on that subject. 



The straw was a few years since burned upon the field to 

 get rid of it, and a part of it is so still. Flax is grown in 

 the West in huge quantities for the seed only, because we 

 have not yet learned how to separate the fibre from the straw 

 with economy. 



The waste of skimmed milk in this country is something 

 enormous ; it is almost a waste to feed it to hogs. I know 

 of one farm on which an excess is used as a fertilizer. We 

 have on our statute book in Massachusetts an absurd law 

 which forbids a true improvement in our breeds of cattle. 

 It is, as I believe, ignorantly held that the value of milk is 

 in proportion to the animal fat or cream which can be taken 

 from it ; whereas we get more than all the fat that we ouoht 

 to eat from other sources, and the real food value of milk is 

 in the skimmed milk, in which nearly all the solids are left 

 when the cream has been taken away. Honest farmers have 

 been fined, as I am told, for bringing pure milk to market 

 from Frisian cattle, — perhaps a better food than richer 

 milk, — because it did not reach the fat standard of this 

 restrictive statute. Yet the Dutch work almost no other 

 breed. Wherever meat is scarce or in some respects un- 

 suitable, as in some parts of southern Europe, the protein 

 or nitrogenous element in the food of the common people 



