72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



and poor. He deemed a varied nutrition essential to the 

 progress of his students. I advised him to construct an 

 oven of pine plank, plastered on the inside with common 

 mortar laid close to the plank on dove-tail lath ; to make 

 this oven of a section of about eighteen inches, as lono- as he 

 pleased, and in the metallic bottom make a round hole two 

 and one-half inches in diameter at every eighteen inches, 

 under which to place a lamp ; then to put large tin boxes or 

 other receptacles for food in this oven, set up on legs an 

 inch or so high, and with that to go on with the operation 

 of cooking. Beginning in a small way, he has ended hy 

 building an oven of sufficient capacity to supply six hundred 

 students with thoroughly well-cooked meats, bread and veg- 

 etables, the tough, sti'ingy Southern l^eef coming out tender, 

 appetizing and nutritious, without waste of the juices of the 

 meat. 



Now you have many problems connected with the feeding 

 of beasts, of which I will only speak of one, — the right 

 method of feeding wheat to stock. Two years ago I made a 

 passage with a very intelligent London job master, who lets 

 out a great many carriage horses, and who raises his own 

 stock on his own farm. He was even then feeding wheat in 

 preference to oats, the food value being greater pound for 

 pound ; but he said that, as wheat is naked or free of chaft' 

 and is liable to swell if fed raw, it must be soaked or par- 

 boiled and slightly cooked, in which condition it serves as a 

 very valuable food for carriage horses, — cheaper than oats, 

 — with a good proportion of liay or other more bulky food. 

 By the way, why do Englishmen keep hay two years before 

 feeding ? 



I believe it is an open question whether or not to cook 

 food for many kinds of animals. Suffice it that where it is 

 expedient to cook food an apparatus corresponding to that 

 which has been set up by President Washington at Tuskegee 

 may serve for the preparation of large quantities of slowly or 

 slightly cooked grain or combinations of grain and chatf. I 

 will give you a caution that there is a remote danger of car- 

 bonizing the wood in a long period ; therefore such apparatus 

 should be kept separate from other buildings, or else it 

 should be placed on a stone or dirt floor, where, even if the 



