



AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 185 



being used as food for man and the lower animals, generally if 

 if not always refer to lichens, which should not be confounded 

 with the musci or true mosses. We find no authentic record 

 of true mosses beiug eaten voluntarily or having been fed to 

 domestic animals. It is a fact of common observation that the 

 domestic animals reject them. This may be due to their being 

 unpalatable or possibly in some cases to deleterious properties. 

 As animals will not eat them unprepared, they would have to be 

 mixed, if fed, with something to make them palatable, as was done 

 by Mr. Sprague. Whether they possess deleterious properties 

 would have have to be determined by feeding experiments for 

 each species. As the mosses have apparently never been 

 examined chemically to determine their nutritive value, the results 

 of the Station Chemist given below will be interesting. They in- 

 dicate that the species examined contain much more nitrogen than 

 the lichen (reindeer moss,) which is freely eaten by species of 

 deer and that they compare favorably with timothy hay in amount 

 of nitrogen, though it is less easily digested. A series of experi- 

 ments to determine palatability, deleterious properties and digesti- 

 bility would be interesting. A more exhaustive analysis might 

 detect compounds that would materially affect *the food value. 

 The following is the 



Report of the Chemist— Mr. L. H. Merrill. 



Since the mosses are not likely to become very important food 

 plants, it was not thought advisable to make a complete analysis 

 of the specimens submitted, but to confine the work to a brief 

 examination of the nitrogenous compounds which they contain. 

 While we do not know the exact nature of these compounds as 

 they exist in the species examined, yet it may be assumed that 

 their value may be determined with some degree of accuracy by 

 applying the same methods used in the study of fodders. 



It is evident that the value of the mosses as food must depend 

 upon their digestibility. They were accordingly submitted for 

 twenty-four hours to the action of pepsin solution, prepared in 

 the ordinary manner. The nitrogen was determined in the undi- 

 gested residues, and the per cent, of th? whole amount of the 

 nitrogen digested calculated from these figures. 



As a matter of interest a common lichen (Cladonia rangiferina) 

 was added to the list. Two well-known fodders, Timothy Hay 

 and Alsike Clover, have also been inserted iu the table for more 

 ready comparison. 



