430 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



vent the wasting of this pork in boiling, the hogs were corn fed 

 for some weeks previous to killing. 



Mr. Field thought that the apple feed rendered important ser- 

 vice in the formation of the cells in the structure of the animal 

 which become properly filled with adipose or tatty matter formed 

 by other food. He had no idea of feeding the creature entirely 

 on apples any more than feeding a human being entirely with 

 apple-saiice. He had found a singular case of the apparent 

 value of ripe fruit in a child of his own, which being seriously 

 affected by bowel disease, had contrived repeatedly to get away 

 to his fruit garden, gather ripe plums from the ground and eat 

 them freely and recover its health in spite, perhaps of the 



plums. 



Solon Robinson thought that there was no doubt that feeding 

 on ripe fruit was a good preparatory to the fattening food. My 

 love of good fruit is so great that I seize on this occasion to 

 beg all the farmers of America to raise good fruit. I wish our 

 w^o^rthy friend Field of Brooklyn, who raises so much of the most 

 excellent fruit, pears especially, to go and raise enough to perfect 

 the pork of America. 



Mr. Field said— I am an enthusiast in fruit, and as to feeding 

 our hogs with the most luscious pears, I say that I can grow 

 more of such pears on an acre of ground than I can potatoes. 



Mr. Robinson— Many farmers let their hogs run in the forest 

 where they fatten on beech-nuts, but that fat, when the killed 

 hogs are piled on the floor, cover that floor with oil so that it 

 may be scooped up. But when these animals are penned and 

 fed for a time with corn, the pork becomes good. 



Dr. Waterbury— The shrinkage of the pork in boiling will be 

 found to be evaporation up the chimney as well as the grease left 

 in the pot. The animal is dropsical. So hogs fed with some 

 madder color their bones, and with corn and other food than the 

 beech nuts, the pork becomes harder. I have tried beech nut 

 pork and it was, I may say, more greasy than corn fed pork. We 

 always drove our hogs in the fall, into our orchard that they 

 might eat up tlie windfall apples; we then put them in the stye 

 and corn fed them till they were solid. 



Dr. Edgar Peck, of Brooklyn, had long noticed the effect pro- 

 duced on the hog by his feeding on the shell fish, &c., on the 

 shores of Long Island. The effect of that feeding was such that 

 nobody could eat the pork ! But such feeders as those can be 

 rendered solid, good pork by finishing them off with a competent 



