SPJiClAL FOODS 53 



quick, healthy growth and early maturity rather than 

 increasing the tendency to fatten. (See Figure 7.) 



The results were most convincing, almost startling, 

 in the case of ducklings fed the contrasted ration. 

 Before the experiment had been long under way it was 

 noticed that the animal-meal birds were developing 

 rapidly and evenly, but the grain-fed ducklings were 

 becoming thin and uneven in size. It was sometimes 

 almost pitiful to see the long-necked, scrawny, grain- 

 fed birds, with troughs full of good, apparently whole- 

 some food before them, standing on the alert and 



Total we iahf aHfll ned. Cost of food foi" 

 ' I Pound Sain« 



4.8 

 Meal 



Oram 



Dry matren'n food 



for I libund jain. f ^^*" 



3.llb5. near 



52 lbs. Grain 

 Fig. 7 MEAT AND GRAIN COMPARED 



scrambling in hot haste after the unlucky grasshopper 

 or fly which ventured into their pen, while the con- 

 tented-looking meat-fed ducks lay lazily in the sun 

 and paid no attention to buzzing bee or crawling beetle. 

 The thirty-two meat-fed birds lived and thrived, but 

 the vegetable-fed birds dropped off one by one, starved 

 to death through lack of animal food, so that only 

 twenty of the thirty-three were alive at the close of the 

 fifteenth week of contrasted feeding. They were then 

 fed for four weeks on the meat meal ration and made 

 nearly as rapid gains as the other lot at the same size 

 two months before, but they never quite overcame the 

 disadvantage of their bad start on grains alone. 



In conclusion, then, it may be said that rations 

 in which from forty to fifty per cent of the protein was 



