CHEMISTRY OF BEAN- STRAW. 243 



to keep the body in health and condition. Darwin tells us 

 that in the mines of South America, the labourers, whose 

 work is perhaps the most severe to which the force of 

 man is applied consisting of carrying loads of 180 Ibs. to 

 200 Ibs. up steep ladders to the surface, from a depth of 450 

 to 500 feet are fed entirely upon coarse bread and beans. 

 They would rather confine themselves to bread alone ; but 

 their masters found that their strength failed upon that 

 diet, and their work regularly decreased, so that they en- 

 force the mixture of beans, in certain proportions, in their 

 daily amount of food. 



Although the feeding value assigned to beans has been 

 checked and confirmed by several of our leading chemists, 

 that of bean-straw appears to have been entirely disre- 

 garded by them; as, so far as we know, the only published 

 analysis of its organic composition is that contained in 

 Mr. Horsfall's paper on the " Management of Dairy 

 Cattle," in the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal, 

 vol. xvii. p. 263. This analysis, 1 however, is manifestly 

 so inaccurate, and consequently so liable to mislead, that 

 Dr. Yoelcker kindly undertook to investigate its compo- 

 sition for me, and thus furnish a more correct (or, at all 

 events, another) standard by which we could estimate its 

 real feeding value. The result of his analysis shows a 

 wide difference in the constituents, and reduces materially 

 the amount of nutritive matter assigned to it in Mr. Hors- 

 falFs paper. Its composition is thus given : 



1 Moisture, 14'47 



Albuminous matter, 16'38 



Oil or fatty matter, 2'23 



Woody fibre, 25'84 



Starch, gurn, &c., 31'63 



Mineral matters, 9-45 



100-00 



