STUDY THE NATURE OF ANIMALS. 135 



early maturity; but seven- tenths of them had, no doubt, 

 suffered from ignorance of this law we have illustrated. 

 And next we should 



STUDY THE NATURE OF THE ANIMAL WE FEED. 



Stock-growers often neglect this injunction. Forgetting 

 the natural habit of the animal, and anxious to make the 

 most rapid progress, they ply it with too concentrated food, 

 and thus cause fever and other diseases in the system. 

 Ruminating animals are possessed of capacious stomachs, 

 calculated to manipulate bulky and fibrous food. Nature 

 never intended that they should be fed upon concentrated 

 food alone. The grains grow upon stalks having twice the 

 weight of the seeds, and animals naturally eat both seeds 

 and stalks together. The ruminating animal requires to 

 eat grain with the coarse, fibrous stalk, in order that it 

 should go to the first stomach, have the benefit of the 

 macerating process of the rumen, and be raised, remasti- 

 cated and mixed with the saliva. Some six different exper- 

 iments have proved to me that corn meal, shelled corn, rye, 

 oats and other fine feed do not, to any material extent, go 

 to the first stomach when fed to cattle alone. One or two 

 experiments by others have seemed to contradict these; 

 but we have only to refer the Western feeder of corn in the 

 ear to the droppings of his cattle, to prove most conclu- 

 sively that the corn does not go to the first stomach. For, 

 if the corn descended into the rumen, and was raised and 

 remasticated, how could the large proportion of kernels 

 found whole in the droppings escape unbroken ? We have 

 seen them so thick over droppings that there was hardly 

 an inch space between them. This must be considered 

 not only a wasteful way of feeding grain, but injurious to 

 the health of the cattle so fed. But in many parts of the 

 Eastern States, quite as little knowledge of the nature of 

 the ruminant is shown, by feeding fine corn meal alone. 



