494 Transactions of the American Institute. 



of your Club. "Will you please inform me where and at what price 



the seed of that and other evergreens can be had % 



Mr. A. S. Fuller — The seeds of arbor-vitse and other evergreens 



can be purchased of almost any of our New York city seedsmen. But 



persons who have had no experience in raising evergreens from seed 



will do better to purchase the young plants, when one or two years 



old, than undertake to start them from seed. Arbor-vitse plants two 



or three years old can be purchased for three or four dollars per 



thousand ; and spruce, pine and similar kinds for ten or twelve 



dollars, when one or two years old. 



Adjourned. 



March 19, 1872. 



Nathan C. Ely, Esq., in the chair ; Mr. John W. Chambers, Secretary. 

 Cooking Food for Stock. 



Mrs. L. Smith, Marquette county, "Wis. — I am opposed to feeding 

 cooked food to animals. Cattle have a digestive 'apparatus, assimilat- 

 ing the raw material of food, and when it is cooked, their secretions 

 are not made use of, and they become unhealthy. 



Dr. J. V. C. Smith — I do not believe in cooking food for stock. 

 It is slavery for women and boys. 



Mi\ John Crane — I have been carefully studying the matter of 

 cooking food for stock. I was brought up to believe that it should 

 be cooked. Experience has taught me that it should not. I fully 

 indorse Dr. Smith. I was taught for fifty years to cook food, but I 

 have now learned that it is not best. I feel grateful to Dr. Smith 

 for having started me on the right road. I am convinced, not only 

 by my own experience, but also by the experience of others. One 

 gentleman, who had been in the milk business for fourteen years, had 

 tried steaming straw and cutting up corn stalks and steaming them ; 

 he had found that his cattle every spring were demoralized and a 

 miserably poor set. Another, near Newark, had started in farming 

 and the milk business, with all the fixtures for boiling and steaming. 

 He tried it for three years and it did not pay. He had to sell out. 

 Another who didn't cook the food went into the milk business in the 

 same neighborhood and had made money, although he lost largely 

 by fire. This winter I tried feeding corn unground, in fact on the 

 cob, and I found that my horses did more and better work than ever 

 before. I bought a cow which had been fed on cooked food, and she 

 improved twenty-five per cent under my treatment. I think farmers 



