1861. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



31 



For the New England Farmer. 

 THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THE TS. E. 

 FABMEB, NOV., 1S60, 



Page 491 — Corn and Cob Meal. — I have some 

 fears that this article, (which gives the substance 

 of a communication in the Ohio Cultivator,) may 

 mislead some of the readers thereof, and more es- 

 pecially those who accept almost every statement 

 which they meet with in print, as trustworthy, 

 neglecting to bring every such claimant upon their 

 belief to the test of reason, common sense, and 

 well-established facts and principles. My fears 

 of such an unfortunate misleading of some are 

 based on two features of this article, one of which 

 is that it has much more of the appearance of 

 having been written by one who wished to make 

 out a plea in favor of a foregone conclusion, or of 

 the utility of grinding cobs, than of having been 

 written to give an unbiassed testimony as to the 

 facts which had come under the observation of 

 the writer. 



Another of the features of this article which 

 has led me to entertain such fears as I have ex- 

 pressed, is, that some of the reasons alleged in fa- 

 vor of the use of grinding cobs along with corn 

 are mere opinions, unsusceptible of proof, or fa- 

 vorable results attributed to the use of the mix- 

 ture of cob with corn meal, which that mixture, 

 in the quantity used, could have very little to do 

 ■with. For example, it is stated "that cob meal 

 is the safest and cheapest feed that is raised in 

 Ohio." Now its superior safety, or its being "the 

 safest" of all feeds, is a claim which cannot be 

 proved, and is, even at a first glance, highly im- 

 probable. Had the advocate for cob meal been 

 able to restrain his great anxiety to make out a 

 strong plea in favor of his client — viz. : cob meal 

 — he would have seen that he was only injuring 

 the cause he had undertaken to plead by a state- 

 ment so wholly beyond the limits of credibility, 

 and so entirely unsusceptible of proof, as that 

 which he made when claiming a superior safety 

 for cobs above all other feed. If he had content- 

 ed himself with merely saying that notwithstand- 

 ing the opinion of several, that cob meal was not 

 a safe feed on account of the hard, flinty, sharp 

 scales contained in cobs, he himself had never 

 met with any case in which damage seemed to 

 have been done thereby, then he would have been 

 within the limits of reason. This is the only tes- 

 timony or plea in favor of the safety of cobs which 

 any judicious or modest man would venture to 

 make. No man of such a character would expose 

 himself to the suspicion of mental unsoundness, 

 or of a blind and overweening anxiety to make a 

 sophistical plea in favor of a weak cause or claim, 

 as must be done when any man attempts to make 

 people believe that cob meal is "the safest feed 

 that is raised in Ohio." 



No man of sound mind or good judgment, 

 ■would even venture to assert conjidenily, as the 

 correspondent of the Oliio CuUicutor has done, 

 that cob meal is perfectly safe — much less that it 

 is the safest of all feeding-stuffs. He v,'ould know 

 that such a statement c«?i?io^ be proved, and could 

 not be accepted, by loise men, merely on the au- 

 thority of his saying so, or of any other man's 

 saying so. All that any sensible man would feel 

 authorized to say in reference to this matter would 

 be no more than this — that nothing had come un- 



der his observation, during his use of cob meal, 

 which led him to suspect it as unsafe or produc- 

 tive of any internal injury or derangement in the 

 animals using it. And even this negative testi- 

 mony, a man who cared for his intellectual repu- 

 tation would be rather reluctant to give, for he 

 would know that any amount of such negative 

 testimony would not avail to counterbalance ev- 

 en a single case of positive testimony going to 

 prove that disease or death had really occurred 

 from the use of cob meal ; and such pvsiiivc tes- 

 timony he would know was on record, if a reader 

 of agricultural papers. 



But I must endeavor to be more brief in what 

 remains to be said. Another of the reasons, al- 

 luded to in the foregoing paragraph, why we en- 

 tertain fears of the reliability of what is said, by 

 the correspondent of the Ohio Cultivator, in favor 

 of the employment of cob meal, is this : he alleg- 

 es that a large amount of the increase in the 

 weight and value of the cattle fed on this meal is 

 to be attributed to so small a quantity of it, as to 

 be beyond the belief of any man of common dis- 

 cernment. It is said, for example, that "cattle that 

 cost him $18 per head in the fall, brought him 

 $45,69 after consuming only about twelve bush- 

 els, 70 pounds in the ear per bushel, ground and 

 cocked." Now, even allowing what is claimed, 

 that grinding and cooking doubles the value of 

 the corn and cobs, can any sensible man believe 

 that an increase in the weight and value of an an- 

 imal which would make it worth nearly $28 more 

 than it cost, could be owing mainly to the use of 

 12 bushels of meal, even if the weight thereof 

 were 70 pounds per bushel ? Every man of any 

 discernment must see that so great an increase in 

 the weight and value of the animal could not be 

 due mainly to the feeding of so small a quantity 

 of food as is, rather ambiguously, designated as 

 "12 bushels, 70 pounds in the ear per bushel, 

 ground and cooked." 



In conclusion, let it be said that those who un- 

 dertake to defend or recommend the practice of 

 grinding cobs Avith corn, and of using the mixture 

 in feeding cattle or other stock, have a task before 

 them v.'hich requires that they should prove, to 

 the satisfaction of men of sense, the two follow- 

 ing propositions : 



1. That the use of corn and cob meal is per- 

 fectly safe, notwithstanding all the testimony on 

 record to the contrary, and notwithstanding the 

 improbability that scales of very great hardness 

 and of knife-like sharpness can go through the 

 stomach without doing any harm. 



2. That it is not a waste to pay for grinding a 

 substance of no more value than so much wheat 

 straw. Moke Anon. 



Frogs. — Somebody who has watched the am- 

 phibious creatures, says in Chambers Journal 

 that male frogs make the most noise, being fur- 

 nished for that purpose with a kind of bladder in 

 the neck, or double action bag-pipe ; but then the 

 voices of the females are the hoarsest and most 

 aggravating. When, however, intent upon doing 

 the agreeable, they have another tone of voice — 

 soft, sweet and plaintive, like a bell heard in the 

 stillness of a summer evening ; from which some 

 naturalists have inferred that it is only the mar- 

 ried couples, and old maids and bachelors, whose 



